THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  THOROUGHBRED 


THE  THOROUGHBRED 


By 
HENRY  KITCHELL  WEBSTER 

AUTHOR  OF 

The  Real  Adventure,  The  Painted  Scene,  etc. 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  BY 

W.  B.  KING 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT  1917 
THE  BOBBS-MEUKILL  COMPANY 


PRESS    OF 

BRAUNWORTH    &    CO. 

BOOK    MANUrACTURERS 

BROOKLYN.    N.    Y. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  OK  EDGE 1 

II  THE  INSULT 21 

III  THE  MORNING  AFTER           .....  47 

IV  EXPLORATION 73 

V  THE  NEW  WORLD 95 

VI  WHEN  HE  CAME  HOME 134 

VII  INTERLUDE           ...         .        .         .        .  145 

VIII  GERMINATION 168 

IX  ALFRED,  MEANWHILE 178 

X  INTERVENTION 211 

XI  IN  THE  DARK 228 

XII  THE  ELEVENTH  HOUR 242 


THE  THOROUGHBRED 


THE 
THOROUGHBRED 

CHAPTER  I 

ON  EDGE 

WHEN  Celia  heard  his  latch-key,  she  sang 
out  from  her  room,  the  open  door  of  which 
was  at  the  head  of  the  stairs : 

"You'll  have  to  fly,  Fred.  It's  a  quarter  to  seven 
and  they're  coming  at  half  past." 

A  minute  later,  realizing  that  he  had  not  an 
swered,  that  there  had  indeed  been  no  sound  at  all 
since  the  click  of  the  closing  door,  she  called : 
"It's  you,  isn't  it?" 

"Yes,  it's  me,"  she  heard  him  say.  And  then 
came  the  swish  of  his  evening  papers  and  the  clat 
ter  of  the  big  buttons  on  his  overcoat  as  he  dumped 

1 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

it  carelessly  on  the  oak  settle  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs. 

But  there  was  another  silence  after  that.  What 
ever  was  he  doing  down  there?  She  even  arrested 
the  movement  of  her  lamb's-wool  so  that  she  could 
listen  better.  Then,  with  a  frown  (not  an  ill- 
tempered  frown;  a  rueful  one  of  exasperated  pa 
tience,  which  one  saw  pretty  often  in  her  face  when 
she  was  talking  to,  or  about,  her  husband)  she 
started  toward  the  door  to  investigate.  But  before 
she  had  taken  more  than  a  step  or  two  in  that  direc 
tion  she  heard  him  lumbering  up  and  went  back  to 
her  dressing-table. 

The  glimpse  of  the  doorway  that  she  got  in  her 
mirror  showed  her  that  he  had  stopped  there,  but 
even  without  that,  she  could  have  felt  him  looking 
at  her.  So,  without  turning,  she  greeted  him  with 
a  good-humored  "Hello,"  and  added,  "You  heard 
what  I  said,  didn't  you?  It's  nearly  seven  and 
they're  coming  at  half  past." 

"Are  there  people  coming  to  dinner?    All  right." 

His  voice  was  stiff  with  preoccupation — hardly 


ON    EDGE 

articulate.  He  might  have  been  talking  in  his 
sleep. 

She  shot  a  glance  at  him  over  her  shoulder. 
"You  don't  mean  to  say  you'd  forgotten  all  about 
the  dinner,  Fred!" 

In  that  same  level  voice,  with  neither  surprise 
nor  contrition  in  it,  he  admitted  that  he  had.  "But 
it's  all  right,"  he  repeated.  "There's  plenty  of 
time." 

"Not  if  you  want  to  shave  in  the  guest's  bath 
room,"  she  warned  him.  "You'll  have  to  be  out  of 
there  with  all  your  lathery  things,  and  clear  up 
after  yourself,  before  a  quarter  past,  because  the 
Colliers  are  driving  out  from  town  and  they  may  be 
a  little  early.  And  I  can't  spare  Marie  to  pick  up 
after  you,  because  I'm  going  to  use  her  myself." 

He  said  "All  right"  again,  in  that  same  dull, 
half-conscious  sort  of  way,  so  that  she  whipped 
round  upon  him  energetically. 

"For  heaven's  sake,  Fred,  wake  up  and  be  hu 
man!  Go  down-stairs  and  get  yourself  a  drink. 
That  sleep-walking  way  of  yours  is  growing  on  you 

3 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

and  you've  no  idea  how  maddening  it  is !"  She 
made  as  if  to  turn  back  to  her  dressing-table,  but 
faltered.  "Nothing's — happened,  I  suppose,"  she 
said. 

He  answered,  "No.  Nothing's  happened."  And 
added  below  his  breath,  "That's  it." 

She  didn't  hear  the  last  two  words  and  would 
hardly  have  understood  them  if  she  had.  But  the 
look  and  the  tone  were  unmistakable. 

"Oh,  I  know,  you  poor  old  dear !"  she  said.  She 
meant  her  voice  to  sound  sympathetic,  but  in  spite 
of  herself,  the  words  came  out  petulantly,  and  a 
realization  of  this  made  her  add,  "You  know,  don't 
you,  Fred,  that  I  wouldn't  keep  you  going  like  this 
if  I  didn't  think  it  was  really  good  for  you  to  buck 
up  and  forget  your  worries  for  a  while?  You  do 
slump  so  when  we're  just  together  and  there's  noth 
ing  to  do.  And  I  know  that  doesn't  help  you,  and 
it's  deadly  for  me.  Don't  you  think  you're  better 
in  the  morning  if  you've  forgotten  to  worry  for  a 
while  at  night?  You  don't  think  I'm  just  a  selfish 
beast,  do  you?" 

4 


ON    EDGE 

He  said,  "No.  It's  all  right.  I'll  buck  up  and 
enjoy  your  party."  But  instead  of  going  out  of 
the  room,  he  came  into  it ;  came  up  close  behind  her 
and  took  her  bare  arms  in  his  hands.  "There's 
time  enough  to  give  a  chap  a  kiss,  isn't  there?" 

She  recognized  his  attempt  to  make  the  request 
sound  good-humored  and  casual;  as  if  what  he 
asked  for  were  nothing  but  the  affectionate  symbol 
good  manners  entitled  him  to.  But  even  without 
the  tell-tale  evidence  afforded  by  the  edge  in  his 
voice  and  the  look  of  his  eyes  in  the  mirror,  just 
on  the  basis  of  long  experience  with  him,  she'd  have 
known  better.  There  seemed  always  to  be  some 
thing  very  inviting  about  her  for  him  at  just  this 
stage  of  her  toilet;  it  was  the  contrast,  perhaps, 
between  what  was  so  completely  finished  and  what 
was  not  yet  begun,  that  added  piquancy  to  her 
other  charms ;  between  the  highly  professional  "do" 
on  her  hair — (it  was  reddish  brown,  but  you  needed 
a  strong  light  to  be  made  aware  of  the  downright 
red  there  was  in  it.  Under  a  milder  illumination 
its  brown  looked  merely  warm.  She  had  a  lot  of  it 

5 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

and  it  was,  perhaps,  the  chief  item  of  her  good 
looks,  though  her  features  were  neatly  chiseled  and 
regular  enough  to  support  the  attention  her  hair 
and  the  color  of  her  skin  attracted) — and  the  tum 
bled  recklessness  of  her  kimono.  And  then  the 
background;  over  the  foot  of  the  bed  the  rose-red 
dinner-gown  which  her  silk  stockings  and  satin 
slippers  matched,  the  sumptuous,  scented  array  of 
toilet  articles  on  the  dressing-table,  the  costly, 
fluffy,  feminine  things  that  hung  out  of  the  half- 
open  bureau  drawers.  Even  through  his  preoccu 
pation  as  he  stood  in  the  doorway,  she'd  been  aware 
— pleasantly  aware,  too — that  he  was  taking  it 
all  in. 

But  as  he  came  up  close  and  took  hold  of  her  she 
leaned  a  little  forward  for  a  closer  inspection  of  her 
face  in  the  mirror,  and  answered  his  request  for  a 
kiss  with  the  remark : 

"You  rode  out  in  the  smoker  to-night,  didn't 
you?  What  unspeakable  sort  of  things  do  they 
smoke  in  places  like  that?" 

His  arms  fell  at  his  sides  and  he  stepped  back. 
6 


ON    EDGE 

Indeed  the  impact  of  a  good  muscular  push  would 
have  been  no  more  effective  of  her  purpose.  She 
added  in  a  tone  of  fretful  apology,  "There  isn't 
time  to  fool,  Fred,  really.  It's  seven  o'clock.  Do 
run  along." 

She  knew  quite  well  that  it  was  not  because  he 
smelled  smoky,  nor  because  there  wasn't  time  for 
the  embrace  he  wanted,  that  she  had  turned  him  out 
like  that.  If  she'd  been  more  indifferent  and  less 
in  love  with  him,  she  wouldn't  have  minded. 

It  was  a  very  old  instinct  in  her,  as  old  as  any 
thing  about  herself  that  she  could  remember — as 
old  as  the  first  starched  frock  of  her  childhood,  to 
hate  being  rumpled.  She  knew  that.  But  she  did 
not  at  all  realize  the  first-class  importance  of  it. 
Her  whole  development  during  more  than  a  score  of 
years  had  been  profoundly  modified  by  it.  It  is  in 
teresting  to  speculate  whether  the  instinct  worked 
from  within  out,  or  from  without  in.  Was  it,  to  be 
gin  with,  just  a  sensuous,  tactile  delight  in  smooth 
surfaces  of  fine  texture  that  kept  her  aloof,  in  her 
play,  from  all  that  clasped  tight,  gripped  hard — 

7 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

and  left  marks  and  creases?  And  had  the  thing 
gradually  worked  in  to  her  soul?  Or  was  the  child 
ish  impulse  to  keep  everything  at  arm's  length  and 
finger's  tip,  the  outer  sign,  merely,  of  something 
that  lay,  from  the  beginning,  at  the  very  core  of 
her?  It  matters  very  little.  The  important  thing 
is  that  the  two  surfaces  of  her,  the  outer  and  the 
inner,  corresponded — whichever  it  was  that  had 
shaped  the  other — and  that  they  both  were  only 
surfaces. 

It  had  not  been,  in  her  childhood,  that  she  lacked 
energy  to  play,  didn't  want  to  play;  and  it  occa 
sionally  happened  that  the  energy  bottled  up 
reached  a  pressure  and  the  want  an  urgency  that 
carried  her  off,  had  her  crumpled,  panting  before 
she  knew  it.  When  that  happened,  she  ran  wild 
for  a  while.  Well,  no  more  was  it,  now  she  was 
grown,  that  she  was  incapable  of  strong  emotions. 
Nor  was  it  the  emotions  themselves  that  she  re 
sented  ;  it  was  their  power  to  tumble  and  ruffle  that 
smooth,  fine-grained  surface  of  hers.  She  hated 
being  made  to  cry,  or  blush,  or  tremble,  hated  the 

8 


ON    EDGE 

drum  of  the  pulse  in  her  throat  and  ears.  So,  when 
she  could,  she  held  at  arm's  length  experiences  she 
suspected  of  the  power  to  produce  these  effects. 

Like  most  radical  instincts,  it  seldom  obtruded 
on  her  consciousness.  She'd  have  denied,  quite  sin 
cerely,  that  it  had  anything  to  do  with  the  major 
decisions  of  her  life ;  with,  to  take  the  supreme  case, 
her  marriage  with  Alfred  Blair.  But  it  did  have  a 
lot  to  do  with  it.  It  also  explained  the  slight  sensa 
tion  of  surprise  that  ran  around  her  circle  of  friends 
when  her  engagement  to  him  was  announced. 

He  was  perfectly  eligible,  of  course.  Only  not 
just  the  man  they'd  have  expected  Celia  French, 
with  her  exaggerated  fastidiousness,  to  select. 

Alfred  Blair  was  a  man  of  whom  every  one  spoke 
well.  But,  in  speaking  well  of  him,  they  were 
likely  to  use  rather  uninviting  adjectives — self- 
made,  steady,  industrious. 

He  was  steady  and  industrious,  and  the  adjective 
self-made  was,  perhaps,  justified  by  the  fact  that 
though  he  was  a  licensed  architect,  and  a  skilful 
engineer,  he  was  ornamented  by  no  college  degrees. 

9 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

He'd  finished  up  his  formal  education  in  one  of 
Chicago's  technical  high  schools,  got  a  job  at  nine 
teen  with  a  firm  of  contracting  engineers  that  spe 
cialized  in  grain-elevators  and  certain  other  forms 
of  warehouses,  factories  and  markets.  At  twenty- 
five,  when  his  big  opportunity  came,  he  had  the 
audacity  to  grasp  it;  borrowed  every  cent  of  his 
mother's  little  fortune,  and  launched  himself  in  a 
similar  business  of  his  own.  His  first  big  contract, 
which  had  given  him  his  opportunity,  had  enabled 
him  to  pay  back  his  mother's  loan  with  a  consider 
able  increment  as  her  share  of  the  profits  (he  had 
insisted  upon  this)  and  left  him  established.  At 
thirty-five,  when  he  and  Celia  were  married,  he  had 
ten  successful  years  behind  him  and  the  assured 
sense  of  power  that  success  brings. 

A  man  of  more  exuberant  manners,  on  the 
strength  of  a  record  like  that,  would  have  been 
called  brilliant.  Blair's  quiet,  steady,  unorna- 
mental  way  made  the  adjective  impossible;  caused 
him  to  be  summed  up,  by  casual  acquaintances  at 
10 


ON    EDGE 

least,  in  a  set  of  terms  which  didn't  account  for  him 
at  all. 

The  thing  that  made  it  all  the  easier  for  persons 
who  had  mastered  a  social  skill  to  patronize  him, 
was  that  he  was  much  too  open-minded  to  despise 
the  things  he  knew  he  lacked  and  too  simple  to 
pretend  to  a  mild  contempt  of  them.  He  wasn't 
ashamed  to  show  an  almost  wistful  admiration  of 
and  desire  for  the  graces  and  refinements  of  life. 
Which  accounted  amply,  of  course,  for  his  falling 
in  love  with  Celia  French. 

But  what  attraction  had  he  for  Celia?  The  less 
affectionate  of  her  acquaintances  had,  of  course,  an 
explanation  ready  to  hand.  The  Frenches  had 
never  been  so  well-to-do  as  they  tried  to  look.  Celia 
had  never  had  a  proper  dress  allowance  and  had 
had  to  do  a  lot  of  contriving  even  to  go  through 
the  motions  of  paying  off  her  social  obligations. 
Here  was  a  decently  presentable  man  with  plenty  of 
money.  It  was  as  simple  as  two  and  two. 

Her  real  friends  resented  this  imputation  hotly. 
11 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

When  you  got  to  know  Alfred  Blair,  you  found 
him  singularly  attractive.  He  had  such  a  straight 
way  of  looking,  and  speaking,  and  doing  things. 
He  had  a  pleasantly  modulated  voice.  He  had,  ac 
cording  to  one  or  two  enthusiasts,  real  tact  and 
charm.  The  question  whether  she'd  have  married 
him,  had  he  not  been  prosperous,  was  a  perfectly 
barren  one.  Alfred  Blair  would  never  have  asked 
her  to. 

But  not  even  her  most  intimate  friends  hit  upon 
the  one  decisive  quality  about  him  that  had  seen  the 
girl,  happily  and  without  misgiving,  through  a 
three-months'  engagement  and  the  beginnings  of 
their  married  life.  This  was  a  touch  of  timidity 
about  him,  almost  reverent,  that  kept  him  from  com 
ing  too  close  too  soon. 

Celia  was  twenty-six  when  she  met  him,  and  had 
had  experience  enough  with  her  own  amatory  emo 
tions  to  believe  she  understood  them.  She  had  been 
engaged  once  and  half-engaged  another  time,  to 
say  nothing  of  an  indefinite  number  of  young  men 
— three  or  four,  anyway — who  had  come  up  to 
12 


ON    EDGE 

the  point  where  she  had  had  to  take  a  line  with 
them.  She  probably  would  have  engaged  herself  to 
marry  the  second  man,  had  not  her  break  with  the 
first  made  her  wary. 

That  experience  with  her  first  lover  had  been  a 
shock.  Her  promise  to  marry  him  had  transformed 
him  unbelievably  into  a  stranger,  and  her  feeling 
for  him,  which  she  had  confidently  diagnosed  as 
true  love,  had  curdled  overnight  into  an  active 
aversion.  The  thing  that  led  to  her  dismissal  of 
the  second  man  was  a  lack  of  confidence  in  herself, 
rather  than  in  him.  She'd  thought  a  good  deal  and 
asked  a  few  questions,  and  profound  and  disquiet 
ing  misgivings  were  the  result. 

And  then  came  Alfred  Blair,  who  put  the  mis 
givings  to  flight.  The  thing  he'd  given  her  first 
was  an  unfathomable  sense  of  security.  All  the 
facts  about  him  fitted  in,  of  course;  that  he  was 
older,  that  he  was  self-disciplined,  and,  it  can  not 
be  denied,  that  he  was  prosperous.  She  tested  him, 
cautiously  at  first,  then  with  growing  confidence. 
The  little  privileges  she  gave  him,  she  freely  am 
id 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

plified  when  she  found  he  never  tried  to  amplify 
them  for  himself.  These  restraints  never  led  her 
to  doubt  the  genuineness  of  his  passion  for  her. 
That  was  plain  enough  for  the  blind  to  see.  But 
the  will  that  reined  it  in  was  supreme. 

Her  new  engagement  and  her  marriage  were 
wonderful  restoratives  to  her  confidence.  She  felt 
her  attitude  to  her  two  former  lovers,  which  had 
caused  her  more  doubts  and  unhappiness  than  she 
was  willing  to  admit,  triumphantly  justified.  Her 
instincts  had  not  been  wrong  after  all.  Happiness 
didn't  necessarily  hurt  nor  deface.  For  a  while  she 
was  utterly  content,  and  her  contentment  was  spiced 
by  a  mild  pity  for  pretty  much  all  the  rest  of  the 
world,  and  especially  for  the  girls  who  had  married 
those  two  former  lovers  of  hers. 

It  was  from  an  unexpected  quarter  that  her 
Nemesis  began  creeping  up  on  her — the  unruly, 
irrepressible  growth  within  herself  of  a  passion  for 
her  husband.  She  found  the  fine  silken  fabric  of 
their  life  imperiled  by  impulses  of  her  own  that  ter 
rified  her.  Jealousy  was  one  of  them — utterly 
14. 


ON    EDGE 

without  foundation  in  fact,  she  knew,  which  made 
it  all  the  more  terrifying. 

There  was  little  Nora  Brice,  for  example,  some 
where  about  twenty,  whose  people  had  lost  all  their 
money,  and  who,  as  much  from  inclination  as  from 
necessity,  gave  dancing  lessons.  The  Blairs  and 
two  or  three  couples  of  their  friends  had  her  in, 
occasionally,  to  keep  them  up  to  the  minute,  and 
she  and  Alfred  had  taken  an  innocently  shameless 
fancy  to  each  other.  She  laughed  at  him — treated 
him  like  a  boy,  proved  to  him,  to  his  intense  aston 
ishment,  that  he  could  dance  as  well  as  anybody, 
and,  under  the  stimulus  of  the  phonograph,  pol 
ished  off  a  facet  of  him  that  nobody  had  dreamed 
existed. 

Celia's  line,  of  course,  was  good-humored  amuse 
ment,  and  she  would,  she  felt,  have  been  irretriev 
ably  shamed  had  any  one  discovered,  especially  had 
her  husband  discovered,  the  true  emotions  her 
manner  masked.  But  she  could  no  more  help  feel 
ing  those  sharp  stabs  of  pain  than  she  could  have 
resisted  the  neuralgic  twinges  of  a  bad  tooth.  Jeal- 
15 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

ousy  was  not  the  only  feeling,  either,  that  shook 
and  gripped  and  dismayed  her. 

So,  from  whatever  motive  you  like  to  name  it 
(she  tried  hard  not  to  name  it  cowardice),  she  clung 
to  the  thing  that  had  once  not  been  a  mask — the 
cool  aloofness,  the  fastidiousness,  the  kindly  af 
fectionate  superiority;  went  on  pointing  out,  with 
humorous  tolerance,  his  little  mistakes;  maintained 
the  position  which  he  had  once  so  eagerly  acqui 
esced  in  and  had  never  tried  to  change,  that  her 
duty  toward  him  was  to  refine  and  civilize  him; 
induce  him  to  appreciate  the  value  of  the  orna 
mental  and  frivolous  aspects  of  life;  get  him  sup 
pler — more,  as  she  used  to  say,  human. 

There  had  come  within  the  last  few  months,  and 
within  a  year  of  their  marriage,  a  change  in  him 
which  made  this  attitude  of  hers  all  the  harder  to 
maintain.  Something  seemed  to  be  undermining 
that  quiet  confidence  in  himself  which,  when  she  had 
first  met  him,  had  been  his  most  distinguishing 
characteristic.  She  knew,  of  course,  that  he  had 
business  worries,  due  to  the  conditions  created  by 
16 


ON    EDGE 

the  outbreak  of  the  war.  But  then,  the  war  had 
affected  everybody.  All  their  friends  groaned  and 
joked  about  their  poverty;  affected  an  extravagant 
ignorance  as  to  where  their  next  meal  was  coming 
from.  But  they  all  went  on  living,  as  far  as  she 
could  see,  in  just  about  the  same  old  way. 

There  was  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Fred  was 
any  harder  hit  than  the  others.  Indeed,  he  talked 
very  much  less  about  hard  times  than  the  other  men 
did.  He  had,  two  or  three  times  lately,  looked 
pretty  solemn  over  bills,  to  be  sure ;  had  asked,  with 
no  jocular  undertone,  how  much  she'd  paid  for  that 
rose-colored  evening  frock,  and  had  made  a  queer 
noise  like  an  audible  shudder,  over  an  offhand  re 
mark  of  hers  about  the  possibility  of  trading  in 
their  car  for  a  this  year's  model. 

That  she  had  not  taken  any  of  these  signs  more 
seriously  was  due  to  the  fact  that  she  supposed  all 
husbands  made  themselves  unpleasant  on  the  sub 
ject  of  domestic  expenditure.  Her  married  friends 
of  longer  standing  seemed  to  accept  this  convention 
quite  light-heartedly,  and  burlesqued  a  lively  terror 
17 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

over  the  effect  of  all  of  their  more  ornamental  pur 
chases  on  their  respective  husbands.  Besides,  Celia 
knew  she  wasn't  extravagant,  really.  It  couldn't 
be  that  that  plunged  her  husband  into  the  brooding 
melancholy  that  seemed  to  envelop  him  whenever 
circumstances  gave  it  a  chance. 

But  this  belief,  quite  honestly  achieved,  didn't 
help  her  much;  because  the  melancholy  was  there. 
Many  a  time  she'd  surprised  a  haggard  look,  al 
most  a  despairing  look,  in  his  eyes,  that  all  but 
brought  the  tears  to  her  own.  And  the  impulse 
that  came  to  get  her  arms  around  him  tight,  to 
demand  to  be  told  what  the  trouble  was — all  about 
it  clear  down  to  the  bottom,  would  be  almost  irre 
sistible.  But  the  fear  of  losing  her  own  self- 
control,  going  to  pieces,  crying,  making  a  damp, 
unpleasant  little  fool  of  herself,  always  restrained 
her — had  up  to  to-night  at  any  rate.  She'd  always 
stiffened  against  it.  In  order  not  to  go  soft,  she'd 
become  brusk — bullied  him  a  little,  urged  him  to 
cheer  up,  dragged  him  off  to  the  theater  or  a  four 
of  bridge  with  the  Calvins  around  the  corner. 
18 


ON    EDGE 

Like  all  situations  between  intimates,  this  be 
tween  them  was  a  product  of  a  thousand  small  ac 
cretions.  Had  he  come  home  six  months  ago  with 
the  look  she'd  seen  in  his  face  to-night,  her  wall  of 
resistance  would  have  been  shattered.  The  troubled 
flood  of  compassion  pent  up  within  her  would  have 
engulfed  him.  But  he  wasn't  so  very  different  to 
night  from  what  he  had  been  this  morning,  or  a 
week  ago ;  not  so  different  but  that  she  could  turn 
back  to  the  face  in  the  mirror,  after  telling  him  to 
run  along,  and  go  on  with  the  minor  improvements 
in  it,  just  as  she  had  been  doing  when  she  heard  his 
latch-key. 

Only  she  eyed  that  mirrored  face  now  with  a 
hard  alertness,  as  an  old  sergeant-major  might 
watch  a  recruit  turning  blue  under  fire,  daring  the 
eyes  to  brim,  or  the  lips  to  tremble.  Her  hands 
began  trembling  and  she  gripped  them  together 
fiercely,  then  slackened  their  clasp  and  set  them  to 
work  again. 

When  Marie,  the  maid,  came  up-stairs  to  hook 
up  the  rose-colored  gown,  the  voice  in  which  Celia 
19 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

questioned  her  as  to  the  state  of  preparedness  in 
the  dining-room  sounded  remote  and  small  to  her 
own  ears,  though  to  Marie  herself,  so  far  as  one 
could  tell,  it  sounded  natural  enough. 

She  stirred  sharply — a  movement  like  anger — 
when  she  heard  her  husband  come  out  of  his  room 
and  walk  steadily  down  the  stairs,  without  pausing 
at  her  now  closed  door  for  a  word.  It  was  not  the 
omission  that  made  her  angry,  but  the  sharp  con 
traction  of  her  own  heart  that  it  caused — the  lump 
that  it  brought  in  her  throat. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  INSULT 

IT  was  eleven  o'clock  that  night  before  she  saw 
him  again,  except  in  the  presence  of  their  guests. 
And  during  all  those  hours,  whenever  her  gaze 
rested  upon  her  husband's  face,  and  whenever  his 
voice  came  clearly  to  her  ears  in  a  lull  of  the  voices 
of  the  others,  heart  and  throat  felt  that  same  clutch 
followed  by  the  same  dull  sense  of  outrage  that  this 
should  be  so.  And  all  the  while  her  voice  went  on 
sounding  small  and  far  away,  and  her  smile  felt 
stiff. 

As  a  matter  of  objective  fact,  she  knew  that  she 
was  in  good  form.  Howard  Collier,  at  her  right, 
being  a  comparative  stranger,  did  not  offer,  per 
haps,  a  fair  test  of  her  powers.  He'd  probably 
have  been  more  or  less  impressed  anyway.  But  that 
Carter  Worthing,  on  her  left — Carter,  the  town 
21 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

bachelor,  who,  on  coming  into  his  inheritance  fifteen 
years  ago,  had  quit  work  and  devoted  himself  to 
the  graceful  evasion  of  matrimony — that  he  should 
betray  an  uneasy  preoccupation  with  what  she  was 
saying  to  Howard  Collier,  while  Martha  Walters, 
at  his  left,  was  trying  her  prettiest  to  flirt  with  him, 
and  should  fairly  snatch  at  the  smallest  straw  of  an 
opportunity  to  turn  back  to  her,  was  an  indication 
worth  paying  attention  to. 

But  the  recognition  of  this  fact  brought  her 
none  of  the  mild  cool  elation  she'd  naturally  have 
felt.  It  hardened,  excited — almost  exasperated  her. 
It  was,  perhaps,  responsible  for  the  attitude  she 
took  when  the  topic  they  were  all  discussing  these 
days  came  up,  the  Grahams'  divorce.  Perhaps,  too, 
it  led  her  to  put  edge  enough  into  her  voice  so  that 
all  the  table  stopped  to  listen,  and  presently 
joined  in. 

"Oh,  I'm  not  on  his  side,"  she  said.  "I  never 
liked  George  Graham  very  well,  and  hardly  knew 
him  at  all,  anyway.  But  I  don't  see  what  there 
is  to  get  so  excited  about.  Three  years  ago,  when 


THE    INSULT 

he  married  her,  Dora  Graham  was  a  raving  beauty. 
Look  at  her  now!  I  don't  think  it's  so  very  sur 
prising,  what  he  did." 

Two  or  three  voices  took  issue  with  her  simul 
taneously.  What  was  the  "for  better,  for  worse" 
clause  in  the  marriage  service  for,  if  not  to  cover 
such  a  case?  Did  she  seriously  mean  to  say  (this 
rather  solemnly  from  Carter)  that  a  wife's  loss  of 
her  beauty  justified  her  husband  in  being  unfaith 
ful  to  her? 

Celia  said  no,  she  didn't  mean  that,  of  course. 
"But  Dora — why  Dora  was  her  looks,  and  her  looks 
were  Dora.  That's  what  George  Graham  married. 
Everybody  knew  it.  Dora  knew  it.  She  wasn't 
like  an  ordinary  pretty  girl.  She  was  a  profes 
sional  beauty,  really.  She  never  pretended  to  know 
anything.  She  never  tried  to  amuse  people.  She 
knew  she  needn't  bother  to.  She  might  have  been 
a  picture  on  the  wall.  Well,  I  don't  say  it's  her 
fault  that  she's  lost  all  that.  But  certainly  it  isn't 
his.  And  she  just  isn't  the  person  he  married,  that's 
all." 

23 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

It  was  an  outrageous  line  to  take,  she  knew. 
She'd  seized  upon  it  to  satisfy  a  need  in  her,  which 
she  didn't  understand,  for  something  hard  and  cold 
and  metallic  like  that.  And  what  she  said  wouldn't 
have  mattered,  had  it  been  engulfed,  as  she'd  ex 
pected  it  to  be,  in  the  confusion  of  dinner-table 
chatter. 

Instead  of  that,  to  her  consternation,  her  words 
were  followed,  and  pointed,  somehow,  by  a  moment 
of  dead  silence  in  which  they  veritably  seemed  to 
echo.  Something  inexplicably  kept  her  from  look 
ing  across  at  her  husband.  And  the  panicky  reali 
zation — inexplicably,  also — seized  her,  that  if  she 
didn't  look  out,  she'd  cry,  right  there,  before  them 
all — make  a  scene.  She,  of  all  people! 

She  flashed  round  on  Carter  Worthing.  "Oh, 
don't  be  so  solemn,"  she  commanded  under  her 
breath.  "Say  something  silly.  It's  your  turn."' 

She  couldn't  have  told  afterward  whether  he  had 
obeyed  her  or  not.  But  from  some  quarter  or  other 
the  talk  started  again.  She  got  her  breath  once 
more.  The  momentary  panic  passed.  But  she  felt 


THE    INSULT 

curiously  limp  all  the  rest  of  the  evening,  and  not 
once  did  she  meet  Fred's  eye. 

It  was  with  a  mixture  of  relief  and  dread  that 
she  saw  her  party  beginning  to  break  up.  The 
relief  was  the  stronger,  until  the  front  door  had 
closed  for  the  last  time.  But  when  it  did,  she  had 
a  wild  impulse  to  rush  out  and  call  back  that  last 
pair  of  guests. 

When  Fred  came  back  into  the  drawing-room, 
and  she  tried  to  speak  to  him,  her  teeth  were  chat 
tering.  What  she  said  was  quite  casual,  though, 
and  her  voice  matched  it. 

"Did  Howard  Collier  tell  you,"  she  asked,  "that 
they're  thinking  of  coming  out  here  for  a  year,  if 
they  can  get  a  house  that's  what  they  want?" 

He  said,  "I  don't  know.    Yes,  I  think  he  did." 

His  own  voice  was  absent — level — lifeless  again, 
just  as  it  had  been  before  she  sent  him  away  to 
dress,  and  he  turned  from  her  and  leaned  an  elbow 
on  the  mantelpiece. 

A  frantic  exasperation  took  her,  but  it  hid,  for 
a  moment,  behind  a  patient  sigh  and  the  statement 
25 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

that  since  she  was  very  tired  she  thought  she  would 
go  to  bed.  But,  against  her  will,  almost — certainly 
against  her  judgment,  she  added  as  she  moved  to 
ward  the  door,  "I  just  can't  stand  that  dead-alive 
voice  and  way  of  yours  any  more,  Fred.  I'm  sorry, 
but  I  can't.  I  can't  stand  it !" 

At  that  he  rounded  upon  her.  "You'll  have  to 
for  a  while,  I  guess,"  he  said,  and  to  her  horror, 
she  saw  his  lips  were  trembling.  His  hands  he 
plunged  bruskly  into  his  pockets. 

"Sit  down,"  he  commanded.  "I've  got  some 
things  to  tell  you." 

The  power  of  habit  is  a  wonderful  thing. 
Neither  her  voice,  nor  its  inflection,  nor  the  words 
she  chose,  afforded  any  indication  of  what  was 
boiling  within  her. 

She  said  evenly,  "Oh,  not  to-night,  Fred.  You're 
tired  and  blue,  and  I'm  all  edges,  somehow.  There's 
no  telling  what  might  happen.  And  it's  no  good 
having  a  scene,  when  we  might  be  getting  a  good 
night's  sleep  instead." 

"A  good  night's  sleep !"  he  repeated.  "I  wonder 
26 


THE    INSULT 

when  I  had  one  last.  I've  forgotten.  Well — I'm 
through!" 

She  sat  down  more  suddenly  than  was  her  wont 
In  making  such  movements,  gripped  the  arm  of  her 
chair,  and  gazed  at  him  with  an  uncomprehending 
stare. 

"Through!"  she  echoed.   "Through  with  what?" 

He  jerked  his  hands  from  his  pockets  and  flung 
them  out  in  a  frantic  gesture. 

"I'm  through  with  this,"  he  shouted.  "With 
everything !  With  this  damned  hell  I've  been  living 
in !"  And  then  instantly,  "I'm  sorry.  I  beg  your 
pardon.  You're  quite  right  not  to  like  scenes.  I'll 
try  to  do  better.  Here's  the  fact  that  concerns  you. 
I'm  broke — completely  broke.  I'm  at  the  end  of 
my  string — the  end,  that's  all." 

She  dropped  back  limply  in  her  chair.  "You 
mean  your  business  is  going  to  fail?"  she  said 
shakily.  Her  eyes  filled  with  tears.  "I'm — I'm 
terribly  sorry,  old  man." 

The  words,  especially  the  last  phrase,  hadn't 
quite  the  right  ring.  That  was  inevitable.  Be- 
27 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

cause,  the  terrible  pang  that  had  gripped  her  when 
he  shouted  that  he  was  through,  had  been  the  belief 
that  he  meant  he  was  through  with  her — couldn't 
endure  her  any  longer — had  fallen  in  love  with 
some  one  else.  It  was  not  a  reasonable  belief.  Just 
something  that  hurt  intolerably. 

On  the  other  hand,  business  failures  were  phe 
nomena  that  were  likely  to  happen  to  anybody. 
She  didn't  precisely  understand  the  nature  of  them, 
nor,  to  tell  the  truth,  why  they  were  taken  so  seri 
ously.  People  went  on  somehow.  Not  quite  the 
same  for  a  while,  but  not  so  very  differently.  They 
gave  up  going  south  in  the  winter,  perhaps.  The 
women  went  about  in  cabs,  instead  of  having  a 
limousine  of  their  own,  and  if  one  had  a  good 
memory,  one  remembered  their  frocks. 

It  would  seem  harder  to  face,  no  doubt,  after 
that  horrible  alternative  she  had  for  a  moment  con 
templated,  was  forgotten.  But  the  thing  to  do  with 
him  just  now  was  to  get  him  quieted  down;  get 
him  to  realize  that,  after  all,  the  pillars  of  the 
world  hadn't  fallen. 

28 


THE    INSULT 

But  the  passion  that  had  caused  his  outbreak 
seemed  already  to  have  subsided.  He  went  to  the 
smoking-table,  picked  out  a  cigar — a  big  expensive 
cigar,  at  which  he  smiled  in  wry  fashion — and 
lighted  it. 

"Do  you  care  anything  about  details  ?"  he  asked. 
"Or  will  you  just  take  the  situation  in  a  lump  as  it 
stands?" 

"I'd  like  to  hear  about  it,  of  course,"  she  said, 
"unless — unless,  for  to-night,  you'd  rather  just 
forget  about  it." 

He  echoed  the  word  forget  with  a  shiver,  but 
immediately  began  with  a  good  appearance  of  com 
posure,  telling  her  his  story. 

"I  can't  see  that  it's  been  my  fault.  There's 
nothing,  now  I  think  back  over  it,  that  I  could  have 
done  differently,  unless  I'd  actually  known  how 
things  were  coming  out.  I  haven't  taken  any  risks 
that  weren't  the  legitimate  risks  of  my  business. 
At  least,  not  since  I  asked  you  to  marry  me.  I  did 
blow  in  fifteen  thousand  the  year  before  that,  on  a 
regular  wild-cat — one  of  those  inventions  that's 
29 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

perfectly  sure  to  make  your  everlasting  fortune 
and  never  does.  But  I  could  afford  to  lose  it  then, 
and  I  figured  the  lesson  I  learned  was  cheap  at  the 
price. 

"But  that  hasn't  anything  to  do  with  the  situa 
tion  I'm  in  now.  The  thing  that's  really  crippled 
me  happened  just  after  the  war.  I  was  half-way 
through  that  big  Waters-Macdonald  contract,  when 
they  went  into  bankruptcy  as  dry  and  clean  as  a 
lot  of  old  bones.  They'd  have  been  on  thin  ice,  I 
suppose,  even  without  the  war,  but  nobody  sus 
pected  that.  When  that  was  cleaned  up,  I  was  out 
about  a  hundred  thousand  dollars,  and  there  wasn't 
any  other  business  to  get  it  back  with.  There  was 
nothing  doing  in  our  line  of  work,  of  course,  for 
months.  The  whole  business  was  paralyzed — dead. 
But  we  all  thought  it  was  going  to  pick  up  soon 
and  the  thing  to  do  seemed  to  be  what  everybody 
was  doing,  sit  tight  and  wait  for  the  squall  to  blow 
over.  It  meant  paying  out  money  all  the  time,  of 
course,  for  no  return  at  all,  just  the  advantage  of 
30 


THE    INSULT 

being  there,  ready  to  do  business  at  the  old  stand 
when  there  should  be  some  business  to  do. 

"I  got  together  all  the  money  I  could,  mort 
gaged  this  house  for  what  it  would  stand — you 
knew  about  that — and  waited.  Well,  that's  what 
I've  been  doing  ever  since.  I've  had  a  few  good 
prospects  to  tease  me  along,  but  nothing — not  one 
thing,  do  you  understand,  has  ever  come  through. 
Over  and  over  again,  I've  been  the  low  bidder  of 
half  a  dozen  normal  bids,  and  lost  the  job  because 
somebody  had  made  a  mistake — gone  wild,  bid 
twenty  or  thirty  per  cent,  too  low. 

"I  suppose  it's  just  my  luck  evening  up.  I  used 
not  to  believe  in  luck.  That  was  because  mine  was 
all  good.  When  I  saw  men  go  to  smash,  I  used  to 
think  that,  somehow  or  other,  it  must  be  their  own 
doing.  Well,  I  know  better  now.  Though  I  sup 
pose  there'll  be  plenty  of  people  who'll  have  a  rea 
son  for  what  happened  to  me,  when  they  know 
about  it.  However — " 

It  rose  to  her  lips  to  ask  what  the  reason  was, 
31 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

but  she  hesitated  over  the  question.  It  couldn't  be 
anything  to  do  with  her — could  it? 

At  last  he  broke  the  silence.  "There's  nothing 
more  to  tell,  really.  I  stood  the  siege  as  long  as  I 
could.  It's  a  relief  to  have  got  to  the  end  of  it.  I 
said  I'd  hang  on  to  the  very  last  day,  and  I  have. 
This  was  it.  It's  been — hell,  the  waiting,  the — 
hoping.  Because,  of  course,  every  time  the  post 
man  came  in,  every  time  the  phone  rang,  it  might 
be  something.  Only,  it  never  was.  I've  been — half 
crazy  lately.  That  accounts  for  the — manner  you 
objected  to.  Well,  it's  over,  thank  God.  I've  got 
to  the  end." 

"But — but,"  she  stammered,  "things  don't  end, 
Fred.  They  have  to  keep  going  somehow.  You 
can't  just — stop."  Her  face  whitened  then,  and 
her  mouth  dropped  open  with  blank  horror,  over 
the  realization  that  there  was  a  way  by  which  a 
man  could  just  stop.  Was  that  what  he  meant? 

She  tried  to  hide  her  terror.  "It  can't  be  so  bad 
as  it  looks  to-night,  Fred.  There  must  be  some 
thing  you  can  do." 


"Well,  it's  all  over,  thank  God" 


THE    INSULT 

"Get  some  more  money  somewhere,  do  you  mean, 
to  tide  me  over?" 

She  assented  with  a  nod.    "There  must  be  ways." 

"There's  a  way,"  he  said.  "My  mother's  little 
bit  is  all  in  my  hands.  I  could  take  that,  and  if  the 
luck  changed  within  the  next  few  months  she  need 
never  know  of  it."  He  eyed  her  with  a  ferocious 
intentness  as  he  made  that  suggestion. 

She  colored.    "I  meant  possible  ways,"  she  said. 

At  that  he  turned  away  and  begged  her  pardon. 
"There  might  be  possible  ways,"  he  said,  "one  or 
two  just  possible."  His  voice  dropped  and  dulled 
a  little.  "And  I  suppose  if  I  wanted  to  take  them, 
I  would.  But  I  don't.  I've  had  all  I  can  stand." 

She  pressed  her  knuckles  against  her  lips  as  if 
that  could  still  their  trembling,  and  tried  to  gulp 
down  the  lump  in  her  throat.  The  tears  were  brim 
ming  out  of  her  eyes  and  trickling  down  her  cheeks, 
but  she  thought  nothing  of  that.  After  a  while 
she  managed  to  say: 

"But — but  what  are  you  going  to  do,  Fred?" 

"I  sold  the  car  to-day,"  he  informed  her,  "for 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

enough  to  pay  the  couple  of  people  I  have  kept  at 
the  office,  and  the  rent  I  owed  down  there,  and  the 
telephone  bill.  They  came  to-day  to  take  it  out.  I 
paid  up,  but  told  them  to  go  ahead  and  take  it.  So 
there's  the  end  of  that." 

"But  you!  What  are  you  going  to  do?" 

The  words  were  a  cry  of  undisguised  terror  that 
brought  him  around.  He  stood  for  a  moment  look 
ing  into  her  face. 

"Oh,  not  that,"  he  said.  "Not  what  you're 
afraid  of.  I've  treated  you  badly  enough  already, 
without  that.  It's  bad  enough  at  the  best,  of 
course,  for  you,  but  there'll  be  something.  There's 
the  house.  The  equity  in  that  is  worth  something, 
if  you  can  realize  on  it,  and  the  furniture  and  so 
on.  Perhaps — "  He  shook  his  head  as  if  per 
plexed  by  some  memory  he  couldn't  quite  get  hold 
of.  "Perhaps  you  could  rent  it  furnished  for 
enough  to  pay  you.  And  your  jewelry  might  help 
tide  you  over  until — " 

"Tide  me  over!"  She  squeezed  the  tears  out  of 
her  eyes  and  stared  at  him.  "Why  are  you  talking 
34 


THE    INSULT 

about  me?  And — and  what  do  you  mean  about 
having  treated  me  badly  already?  Tell  me  that 
first." 

"Oh,  that's  plain  enough,"  he  said.  "It  ought 
to  be  plain  enough  to  you.  False  pretenses — not 
up  to  specifications.  It's  just  as  you  were  saying 
at  dinner  to-night.  The  man  you  married  amounted 
to  something — a  comfortable,  prosperous,  solid  and 
reliable  sort  of  ,chap.  Well,  as  you  say,  I'm  not 
that  man.  That  man's  finished.  He's  gone,  and 
I  can't  play  his  game.  It's  no  use.  I  haven't  the 
nerve  for  it.  I  haven't  the  sand.  I'm  good  for 
twenty-five  dollars  a  week,  perhaps — thirty  at  most, 
over  a  drafting-table  in  some  other  chap's  office, 
and  that  lets  me  out.  It's  rotten  luck  for  you.  I'm 
sorry  about  it.  That's  why  I  was  trying  to  figure 
out  some  way  to  make  it  easier.  I'll  do  anything 
I  can — anything  you  want  me  to  do.  And  you 
could  rely  on  me  not  to  do  anything  that  would 
make  it  harder.  You  understand,  don't  you?" 

He  was  not  looking  at  her  while  he  spoke,  but 
she,  to  make  it  impossible  for  him  to  do  so,  pulled 
85 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

her  chair  around  so  that  she  could  lean  both  elbows 
on  her  spinet  writing-desk. 

"Yes,"  she  said  in  a  stifled  voice,  "I  guess  I  do. 
I'm  beginning  to  get  the  idea,  I  think."  Her  eyes 
were  dry  now  and  her  cheeks  were  burning.  "The 
idea  was  that  the  man  I  married  was  able  to  give 
me  a  house  like  this  and  all  the  clothes  I  wanted, 
and  a  motor,  and  so  on.  That  was  a  part  of  the 
marriage  service  that  the  minister  didn't  read.  But 
it  was  understood  just  the  same. 

"And  because  that  was  your  contract,  you 
wouldn't  tell  me  how  things  were  going  with  you, 
or  ask  me  to  economize.  Because  you  never  did — 
never,  never — never  once,  so  that  I  understood  that 
you  meant  anything  by  it.  Why,  you  didn't  even 
joke  about  being  poor  now  on  account  of  the  war, 
the  way  the  others  did.  That  was  your  way  of  liv 
ing  up  to — specifications,  I  suppose  you'd  say. 
You  just  let  me  go  right  up  to  the  very  last  day 
— the  day  when  they  came  to  take  the  telephone. 
Oh!  And  then  you  tell  me  it's  over. 
36 


THE    INSULT 

"And  now,  if  I  understand  what  you've  been 
saying,  you're  showing  me  how  I  can  pick  up 
what's  left  out  of  the  wreckage  and  scuttle  back 
home  to  father  and  mother  and — and — this  was 
what  you  meant  about  doing  anything  I  wanted — 
that  I  should  get  a  divorce  from  you  on  some  pre 
text  that  you'd  furnish  me  with,  and — and  try  my 
luck  again.  And — and  the  jewelry  would  tide  me 
over  until  I  could  find  somebody  else  who'd  meet  the 
requirements." 

There  was  a  silence  of  minutes  after  that.  He 
stirred  two  or  three  times  as  if  he  meant  to  speak, 
but  gave  it  up.  Her  way  of  putting  the  thing 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  admit  that  she  had 
taken  his  meaning  correctly,  but  the  essential  truth 
of  what  she  had  said  prevented  his  denying  it. 

Presently  she  began  to  cry,  put  her  head  down 
on  her  arms  and  sobbed  and  shook.  He  sat  frozen 
in  his  chair  at  the  other  end  of  the  room.  He  didn't 
dare  come  near  her.  He  couldn't  think  of  a  word 
to  say.  After  a  while — a  period  of  time  that 
87 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

seemed  endless  to  him — she  sat  erect  again,  dried 
her  wet  face  and  began  getting  control  of  her 
breathing. 

The  first  thing  she  managed  to  say  was,  "I'm 
sorry  to  be  such  a  mess.  If  anything's  silly  to  do, 
it's  to  cry.  But — but  an  insult  like  that  makes  you 
so  sick  you  can't  help  yourself." 

He  cried  out  at  that.  "Celia,  I  didn't  mean  it 
for  an  insult." 

She  choked  down  another  miserable  sob  and  an 
swered.  "I  know  it.  That's  what  makes  it  so  per 
fectly  unendurable.  If  you'd  said  it  because  you 
were — angry  with  me  and  w-wanted  to  hurt  me  just 
as  hard  as  you  possibly  c-could,  it  wouldn't  be  so 
bad.  But  you  really  m-mean  it.  That's  what  you 
th-think  I  am.  That's  what  you've  thought  ever 
since  you  married  me.  I  suppose  I  ought  to  be 
glad  I  found  out  at  last." 

He  got  out  of  his  chair  and  there  was  another 

long  silence  while  he  walked  slowly  back  and  forth 

the  length  of  the  room,  sometimes  with  his  hands 

in  his  pockets,   sometimes   getting  them   out   and 

38 


*2 


d 

I 


THE    INSULT 

squeezing  them  together,  sometimes  pausing  to  look 
at  her  where  she  sat  with  her  back  to  him,  drooping 
over  the  little  spinet  desk  (making  a  wonderfully 
appealing  picture  with  her  rose-colored  frock  of  the 
new  old-fashioned  cut,  her  gay  colors  and  her  wo- 
begone  air)  and  then  moving  on  again.  Any  one 
watching  him  could  have  seen  that  a  momentous 
question  was  struggling  within  him  trying  to  get 
itself  asked.  It  is  possible  that  Celia,  without  look 
ing  at  him  at  all,  was  aware  of  this. 

It  broke  through  at  last.  He  said  unevenly, 
"Celia,  do  you  mean  that  you're  still  fond  of  me 
without — without  any  of  the  things  that  were  a 
part  of  me  when  we  were  married?  And  that  you 
won't  mind  coming  down  to  twenty-five  dollars  a 
week  with  me?  Is  that  what  you  mean?" 

She  flushed,  straightened,  whipped  round  on  him 
in  a  gale  of  wrath.  "Mind !"  she  said.  "Of  course 
I  mind.  I  mind  horribly.  I  hate  it.  Poverty's  not 
romantic,  and  it's  not  a  lark,  and  there's  nothing 
nice  about  it,  and  the  virtuous,  superior  way  people 
act  about  it  makes  me  tired — pretending  they  like 
39 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

it,  pretending  they  wouldn't  change  things  if  they 
could.  I  notice  they  do  change  pretty  quickly 
when  they  can." 

She  went  on  to  say  a  good  deal  more  than  that 
of  the  same  import.  She  talked  about  the  horror 
of  three-room  flats  "out  on  the  West  Side  some 
where!"  She  dwelt  upon  the  terrors  of  makeshift 
home-made  furniture  with  cretonne  tacked  on 
around  it,  the  dismal  results  of  fifty-cent-a-day 
cookery  out  of  the  back  pages  of  domestic  maga 
zines.  She  brought  out  the  fact  that  these  trials 
were  much  less  unbearable  in  the  cases  of  certain  of 
her  friends  who  had  at  least  assumed  them  with 
their  eyes  open.  But  to  be  asked  if  she'd  "mind" 
going  and  living  like  that,  as  the  result  of  an 
ignominious  smash  which  she,  ludicrously  and  in 
tolerably,  hadn't  seen  until  it  was  about  her  ears — ! 
In  short,  in  her  tempest  of  anger,  she  whipped  and 
cut  him  where  and  how  she  could,  and  had  him 
looking  pretty  white  and  sick  before  she  got 
through. 

He  might  have  drawn  a  favorable  augury  from 
40 


THE    INSULT 

all  this,  but  it  isn't  wonderful  that  he  did  not.  He 
failed  to  remark,  in  the  first  place,  that  she  had 
left  the  first  half  of  his  question  unanswered — the 
question  whether  or  not  she  really  was  in  love  with 
him,  himself,  rather  than  with  the  contented  and 
prosperous  citizen  he  had  ceased  to  be.  And,  while 
he  saw  that  she  was  trying  frantically  to  hurt  him, 
to  draw  blood  wherever  she  could,  snatching  at  any 
stinging  phrase  that  would  serve  her  purpose,  he 
was  unable  to  make  the  simple  deduction  from  this 
fact  that  unless  she  were  in  love  with  him — very 
much  in  love  with  him — the  exercise  would  have 
afforded  her  no  satisfaction.  She'd  have  been  con 
cerned  with  her  own  feelings,  not  his. 

Her  words  stumbled  at  last  over  a  big  sob  and 
she  pulled  up  short,  visibly  got  herself  in  hand,  and 
said  very  deliberately: 

"What  you  said  was,  wasn't  it,  that  you'd  do 
anything  you  could — anything  I  wanted  you  to? 
I  mean,  as  far  as  I  was  concerned?" 

He  nodded,  but,  as  she  wasn't  looking  at  him,  he 
had  to  speak.  It  took  a  struggle  to  get  the  words 
41 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

out  of  his  stiff  throat,  but  he  finally  managed,  "Yes, 
that's  what  I  said." 

"And  you  mean  it?"  she  asked.  "You'll  do  it? 
That's  a  serious  promise?" 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "What  is  it  that  you  want  me 
to  do?" 

She  told  him  to  wait  a  minute,  she  wanted  to 
think.  It  was  with  a  question  that  she  began,  and 
the  nature  of  it  startled  him  into  a  staring  speech- 
lessness,  so  that  she  had  to  ask  it  two  or  three 
times. 

"Can  you  really  get  that  job  you  were  talking 
about,  twenty-five  dollars  a  week  or  so — at  a  draft 
ing-table,  I  think  you  said?  I  mean,  can  you 
count  on  it,  as  much  as  that  a  week?" 

Finally  he  roused  himself  enough  to  say,  "Yes,  I 
guess  so." 

She  hesitated  over  her  next  question,  drew  herself 
up  a  little  more  defiantly  erect,  and  made  sure  she 
had  command  of  a  steady  glance  and  a  coldly  re 
mote  tone  before  she  asked. 

"If  a  man  and  his  wife  were  going  to  live  on 


THE    INSULT 

that,  how  much  rent  could  they  afford  to  pay  for  a 
flat?  They'd  live  in  a  flat,  wouldn't  they?  It 
would  be  cheaper  than  a  boarding-house?  If  she 
did  all  the  work  herself — of  course?" 

"Celia !"  he  cried.    "You  mean—?" 

"Answer  my  question,"  she  commanded  furi 
ously.  She  was  furious  because  she  had  to  look 
away  from  him  after  all.  "Would  they  have  a 
small  flat,  I  mean,  instead  of  a  boarding-house?" 

"Yes,"  he  said  raggedly,  "they  would.  And  they 
could  pay  about  twenty-five  dollars  a  month  for  it." 
Then  he  came  up  behind  her,  not  touching  her,  but 
leaning  close,  one  hand  on  the  chair-back,  the  other 
on  the  desk  beside  her.  Even  so  she  could  feel  that 
he  was  trembling,  and  she  had  a  giddy,  irrational, 
terrifying  impulse  to  fling  her  arms  around  him — 
around  whatever  of  him  was  within  reach,  and  press 
her  face  against  him  and  cry. 

"Do  you  mean — ?"  he  asked.  "Celia,  do  you 
mean  that  you're  going  to  do  it?  Going  to  see  it 
through  with  me  in  spite  of  everything?" 

She  flashed  from  the  chair  to  her  feet  and  backed 
43 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

away  from  him.  She  couldn't  see  him  for  the  in 
furiating  tears  that  kept  welling  over  and  spilling 
down  her  cheeks. 

"Of  course  I  mean  it,"  she  said.  "What  else  is 
there  that  I  can  do?  It's — it's  not  because  I'm 
f-fond  of  you.  It's  because  I  want  to  show  you 
what  an — what  an  insufferable  insult  that  was." 

As  he  gazed  at  her  now,  the  blood  began  to  come 
back  into  his  cheeks,  his  breathing  quickened,  he 
clenched  his  hands.  He  realized  now  that  part  of 
his  question  had  not  been  answered. 

"But  if  you  weren't  fond  of  me — "  he  stam 
mered.  "You  are,  aren't  you,  even  if  I  am  no 
good?" 

"I  was,"  she  flung  at  him  furiously,  "I  was — 
p-perfectly  idiotic  about  you,  until  I  found  to 
night  how  you'd  been  thinking  about  me  all  the 
time — what  sort  of  a  person  you  thought  I  was. 
You've  been  hating  me,  thinking  it  was  all  my 
fault,  and  feeling  very  noble  because  you  never 
complained.  Well,  I'm  going  to  show  you.  You 
won't  like  it.  You'll  wish  I'd  gone  scuttling  back 
44 


THE    INSULT 

to  mother  and  lived  on  my  jewelry,  and  left  you 
free  to  think  what  a — what  a  vampire  I  was.  Well, 
I'm  not  going  to  let  you  do  it. 

"You've  promised  to  do  whatever  I  wanted,  and 
that's  it.  You  go  and  get  your  job,  while  I'm  find 
ing  a  flat.  Then  we'll  see." 

This  spirited  rear-guard  action  sufficed  to  cover 
her  retreat.  She  eyed  him  steadily.  There  was  no 
longer  about  his  look  the  suggestion  that  in  an 
other  second  he  might  laugh  and  cry  all  at  once, 
and  hug  her  up  in  his  arms  and  demolish  her.  He 
was  harmless  now,  for  half  a  minute  at  least — the 
half-minute  she  needed. 

"I  think  if  you  don't  mind,  I'll  go  to  bed,"  she 
announced  politely,  and  left  him. 

Probably  she  needn't  have  locked  her  door,  but 
she  did,  with  a  good  defiant  click  she  hoped  he 
heard.  Then  she  went  over  to  her  glass  and  took 
a  look  at  herself.  The  tumbled,  tear-wet,  panting 
object  she  saw  there  was  another  creature  from  the 
last  Celia  she'd  seen.  That  fine,  smooth,  unruffled 
surface  she'd  always  guarded  so  carefully,  was  a 
45 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

rag — a  mop.  Celia  allowed  herself  to  laugh  at  it 
— a  dangerous  thing  to  do,  because  the  laugh 
choked  in  mid-career;  the  tears  came  up  again. 
She  shot  a  last  look  of  defiance  into  the  mirror — 
she  did  not  care — and  let  go.  She  laid  her  face 
down  on  her  bare  arms  and  cried  to  her  heart's 
content. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  MORNING  AFTER 

AFTER  five  or  six  hours  of  the  solidest  sleep  he 
had  enjoyed  in  weeks,  Alfred  Blair  came  wide 
awake  all  at  once  and  set  himself  to  wrestling  with 
the  new  factors  in  his  situation,  those  that  Celia's 
unexpected  attitude  and  unprecedented  display  of 
emotion  last  night  had  forced  upon  him. 

He  realized  that  the  things  women  say  in  mo 
ments  of  emotional  stress  do  not  always  represent 
their  considered  opinions.  Celia's  avowal,  for  ex 
ample,  that  she  had  been  fond  of  him — "perfectly 
idiotic  about  him" — up  to  the  moment  of  what  she 
had  spoken  of  as  his  insult  last  night,  might  have 
been  snatched  merely  as  an  effective  background 
to  set  off  the  insult  itself  in  more  lurid  colors. 

But  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  she  felt  strongly 
about  the  matter.  She  was  not  indifferent  to  him. 
Chivalrously  as  he  had  meant  it,  he  could  see  now 
47 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

that  his  suggestion  of  a  willingness  to  furnish  her 
with  a  pretext  for  getting  rid  of  him  altogether, 
right  on  the  heels  of  his  confession  of  his  financial 
downfall,  had  been  inconsiderate — even  brutal.  It 
occurred  to  him  that  a  clever,  unscrupulous  man, 
who  wanted  to  goad  his  wife  into  the  acceptance  of 
his  fallen  fortunes  with  him  could  hardly  have 
adopted  more  skilful  tactics ;  granted,  that  is,  that 
he  had  the  unmerited  luck  to  be  married  to  a  little 
thoroughbred  like  Celia. 

He  felt  terribly  contrite  about  it.  His  memories 
of  the  evening  convicted  him  of  about  all  the  crimes 
in  the  husband's  calendar.  He  had  sworn  at  her, 
bellowed  at  her,  made  her  cry,  for  the  first  time,  so 
far  as  he  knew,  since  they  had  been  married.  He 
had  infuriated  her  into  the  resolution  to  share  his 
poverty  on  a  putative  twenty-five  dollars  a  week; 
into  binding  herself  to  it  by  means  of  that  promise 
of  his  that  he  would  assent  to  any  plan  for  their 
future  which  she  might  propose. 

Well,  it  was  now  up  to  him  to  get  her  out  of 
that.  Tact  was  called  for,  clearly — self-control. 
48 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

He  must  let  her  see  that  his  happiness  was  bound 
up  in  hers;  that  for  her  to  go  back  to  her  father 
and  mother  and  to  what  comfort  and  independence 
might  be  derived  from  the  salvage  of  his  shattered 
fortune  involved  no  disloyalty  to  him ;  would  be  an 
act,  indeed,  of  the  deepest  consideration  for  him. 
And,  if  she  wanted  to  wait  for  him,  there  might 
arrive  a  day  when  he  could  come  back  to  her,  bring 
ing,  as  it  were,  his  sheaves  with  him — a  new,  per 
haps  ampler,  crop  of  sheaves. 

He  talked  it  all  out  with  her  three  or  four  times, 
trying  out  different  lines  of  reasoning.  And,  inas 
much  as  he  provided  her  half  of  the  conversation 
as  well  as  his  own,  they  all  came  out  satisfactorily. 

Over  the  breakfast  table,  naturally  enough,  it 
was  a  different  story.  Celia  ruined  his  opening  by 
being  already  seated  behind  the  percolator  when 
he  came  into  the  dining-room;  by  being  dressed, 
unprecedentedly,  in  a  very  businesslike  looking 
skirt  and  blouse;  by  having  obliterated  from  her 
looks  and  air  every  trace  of  the  ravages  wrought 
by  last  night's  tempest.  She  was  further  fortified 
49 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

with  a  quantity  of  crisp  directions  for  the  maid 
which,  while  they  did  not  keep  her  constantly  in  the 
dining-room  during  the  first  ten  minutes  after  he 
came  down,  kept  her  imminent,  so  that  there  was 
no  chance  to  say  anything. 

And  then,  suddenly,  with  a  "That's  all"  to  the 
maid,  Celia  took  the  game  into  her  own  hands. 

"The  Colliers  really  want  a  house,"  she  said, 
"and  they  acted  last  night  as  if  they  liked  this.  So, 
if  you  think  the  best  thing  to  do  with  it  is  to  rent 
it  furnished,  we'd  better  try  to  get  them — hadn't 
we — to-day  ?" 

It  is  always  terribly  hard  to  go  on  across  a 
breakfast  table  from  where  one  left  off  the  night 
before.  There  is  something  so  intensely  prosaic 
and  matter-of-fact  about  the  meal  and  its  surround 
ings  that  drastic  decisions — any  projects  which 
contemplate  a  break  in  the  daily  routine,  are  likely 
to  appear  fantastic. 

He  managed  something,  not  meeting  her  eye, 
about  sticking  it  out  another  month. 

But  her  reply  came  cleanly  back.  "Not  a  minute 
50 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

after  we  can  get  away.  Even  if  you  could  stand 
it,  I  couldn't." 

She  was  so  clearly  right  about  this  that  he 
yielded  at  once.  He  knew  he  couldn't  stand  it 
either.  And  this  initial  victory  of  hers  gave  her 
command  of  the  situation.  He  never  had  a  chance 
after  that.  He  owned  that  the  Colliers  presented 
an  opportunity  not  to  be  thrown  away.  A  forced 
sale  always  meant  a  terrible  sacrifice.  The  rental, 
at  any  sort  of  reasonable  figure,  would  meet  the 
interest  charges  on  the  mortgage,  the  taxes  and  so 
on;  would  pay  off  in  the  course  of  a  few  months 
their  local  bills,  and  would  provide,  after  these  de 
mands  had  been  satisfied,  a  steady  little  income, 
which  would  come  in  handy,  he  concluded,  in  any 
case. 

"In  any  case"  was  meant  as  an  entering  wedge 
— a  way  of  saying  that  a  part,  at  least,  of  the 
program  he  had  suggested  last  night,  was  still  open 
to  her.  She  could  go  back  to  her  father  and  mother 
and  wait  for  him. 

But  the  very  intent  look  which  the  phrase  drew 
51 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

from  her,  though  it  invited  an  explanation  of  what 
he  meant  by  that,  paralyzed  his  resolution.  She 
so  very  clearly  was  waiting  with  an  ax  for  that  idea 
to  thrust  out  its  head. 

He  looked  out  the  window  and  said  he'd  try  to 
see  Collier  some  time  to-day. 

"Would  you  mind  leaving  that  to  me?"  she 
asked.  Though  in  all  but  form,  the  request  was 
a  command.  "I  can  see  Ruth  this  morning  and  I 
think  I  can  make  a  better  bargain  with  her  than 
you  could  with  Howard."  Then  she  flushed  up  a 
little  and  added,  "That  isn't  the  real  reason.  I 
want  to  tell  her  my  own  story  about  why  we're 
doing  it. 

"I'm  going  to  tell  her,"  she  went  on,  with  a  rush, 
"that  you're  all  worn  out,  on  the  edge  of  a  bad 
breakdown,  and  that  I'm  going  to  take  you  away 
west  somewhere — and  that'll  be  true,  because  the 
West  Side's  west,  and  I  shan't  tell  her  how  far 
— before  it  gets  any  worse." 

"Is  it  your  idea,"  he  asked  stiffly,  for  the  thing 
hurt  him  dreadfully,  "that  we  can  disappear  under 
52 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

cover  of  a  story  like  that,  and  that  no  one  will  find 
out  about  the — disgrace  that  happened  to  us?  If 
it  is,  I  can  tell  you  now  that  it  won't  work.  There 
are  a  hundred  ways  for  the  facts  to  get  out,  even 
supposing  I  could  slink  about  the  streets  down 
town  without  encountering  anybody." 

"I  don't  expect  it  not  to  come  out,"  she  said. 
"But  the  story  I  was  going  to  tell  Ruth  would 
give  me  a  chance  to  get  away  before  they  knew — " 

"The  disgraceful  truth,"  he  put  in. 

She  flung  the  phrase  back  at  him.  "Exactly. 
The  disgraceful  truth  that  I  never  knew,  never  sus 
pected  a  thing,  until  the  actual  moment  of  the 
smash.  That  shows  such  a  ghastly  lot.  Well,  I 
want  to  get  away  before  they  can  put  two  and  two 
together.  And  I  want  to  do  it  in  such  a  way  that 
they'll  understand  I  don't  want  to  be  followed  up 
and  dropped  in  on  and  taken  for  charity  rides  in 
their  motor-cars.  I  want  it  fixed  so  that  if  they  do 
see  me,  they'll  have  to  pretend  they  don't."  And 
then,  most  unfairly,  she  stepped  on  the  buzzer  and 
summoned  the  maid. 

53 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

Between  that  act  and  the  opening  of  the  service- 
door,  she  got  herself  in  hand  again,  recovered  her 
tottering  poise,  and  was  able  to  say  in  parenthesis, 
between  two  factitious  directions  to  Marie,  "Of 
course  you  can  go  to  Howard  yourself,  if  you'd 
rather  I  didn't  see  Ruth." 

He  said  into  his  coffee-cup,  "No,  that's  all 
right." 

He'd  have  said  right  then,  if  interrogated,  that 
she  had  hurt  and  angered  and  humiliated  him  as 
far  as  she  could.  The  maneuver  of  summoning  the 
maid,  the  way  she  had  phrased  and  timed  her  offer 
not  to  go  to  Ruth  at  all,  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
remind  him  that  he  had  promised  the  night  before 
to  assent  to  anything  she  wanted;  and  to  make  it 
impossible  for  him  to  reply  except  by  a  categorical 
Yes  or  No,  was,  he'd  have  said,  the  last  arrow  in 
her  quiver.  It  proved,  however,  that  she  had  one 
more. 

She  rose  from  the  table  when  he  did,  and  he  saw 
that  she  had  a  package  in  her  hand — must  have  had 
it  in  her  lap  during  the  whole  of  the  meal,  a  pack- 
54 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

age  whose  solidly  rectangular  form  was  but  indif 
ferently  disguised  by  the  bunglesome  job  she  had 
made  of  wrapping  it  up. 

He  looked  hastily  away  from  it  after  one  glance, 
and  said: 

"I  can't  promise  to  get  that  job  to-day,  of 
course.  But  I'll  do  my  best." 

"You  might  call  me  up  this  afternoon,  if  you 
have  any  luck,"  she  suggested.  "Then  I  can  tell 
you  how  I've  come  out  with  Ruth  about  renting  the 
house.  You  and  Howard  will  have  to  settle  up  the 
details,  of  course." 

He  said  he  supposed  so,  and  with  a  nod  of  fare 
well,  which,  in  his  state  of  mind  was  the  only  leave- 
taking  he  dared  attempt,  he  turned  to  leave  the 
room. 

She  called  him  back.  "Here's  something,  Fred," 
she  said  in  a  tight  little  voice*  "for  you."  She  held 
the  package  out  to  him. 

He  knew  what  it  contained  well  enough,  as  the 
dark  flush  that  came  up  into  his  face,  and  the  ab 
surdly  overacted  casualness  of  his  manner  of  say- 
55 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

ing,  "Oh,  what  is  it?"  made  evident,  no  doubt,  to 
her.  Also,  he  backed  away  a  little  as  he  spoke,  and, 
further  to  secure  his  hands  from  the  necessity  of 
taking  the  package  from  her,  he  put  them  in  his 
pockets. 

She  reddened,  too,  and  said,  "It's  the  pearls  and 
the  other  things,  everything — practically.  What 
you  were  telling  me  last  night  I  could  live  on 
—  while  I  was  waiting  for  somebody  else  to 
turn  up." 

Thereupon  ensued  what  I  can  only  characterize 
as  a  row — a  rowdy  row  at  that,  concerning  the 
details  of  which  I  feel  it  my  duty,  as  a  self-respect 
ing  chronicler,  to  maintain  a  decent  reticence.  The 
major  tactics  of  the  battle,  however,  may  be  indi 
cated. 

He  announced  very  forcibly  that  he  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  her  jewels  beyond  acting  as  her 
agent  for  the  disposal  of  them.  If  she  chose,  in 
spite  of  her  avowed  belief  in  his  business  incom 
petence,  to  entrust  the  job  of  selling  them  to  him, 
56 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

he  would  make  the  best  bargain  he  could,  and  have 
the  jeweler  mail  the  check  direct  to  her.  She  an 
nounced  a  passionate  indifference  as  to  what  he  did 
with  them,  provided  only  that  she  should  never  be 
asked  to  look  at  them  again,  or  accept,  or  hear  any 
thing  about,  the  proceeds  of  their  sale.  It  is  per 
haps  not  fair  to  say  that  she  flung  the  package  on 
the  floor.  She  propelled  it  vigorously  in  his  direc 
tion,  and  he  declined  to  accept  it,  the  law  of  gravi 
tation  operating  in  the  usual  manner.  He  sug 
gested  the  ash-barrel  as  a  proper  receptacle,  and 
she,  by  implication,  agreed  with  him. 

When  they  parted,  she  for  her  room,  and  he  for 
the  seven-fifty-three  train,  about  the  most  one  can 
say  for  them  is  that  he  hadn't  actually  shaken  her, 
nor  she  literally  slapped  him.  Short  of  that, 
neither  of  them  had  left  anything  undone  to  pro 
voke  and  justify  the  fury  of  the  other. 

The  wrath  of  a  kindly,  slow-tempered  man,  once 
it  is  heated  up  to  the  point  of  incandescence,  is  a 
much  hotter  thing  than  any  emotion  that  a  quick- 
57 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

tempered  man  or  woman  can  experience.  Celia  her 
self  would  have  been  horrified  could  she  have  known 
the  temperature  of  her  husband's. 

All  the  way  to  town  in  the  train,  behind  the  shel 
ter  of  his  newspaper,  he  seethed  like  molten  steel. 
The  last  look  of  helpless  fury  he  had  seen  in  Celia's 
face,  and  the  tears  that  stained  it,  were  his  only 
source  of  satisfaction.  He  had  given  as  good  as 
he  got  in  that  last  five  minutes,  anyway.  He 
wished  he  had  begun  sooner.  He  was  sorry,  on  the 
whole,  he  hadn't  shaken  her. 

But  the  episode  of  the  jewelry  was  more  or  less 
satisfactory.  The  injury,  which  acted  as  a  blow 
pipe  to  keep  his  wrath  from  cooling,  was  the  thing 
that  had  happened  before  that — her  avowal  of  the 
story  she  meant  to  tell  Ruth  Collier  about  his  nerv 
ous  breakdown  and  her  intention  to  take  him  "west 
somewhere" ;  her  admission  that  she  felt  herself  dis 
graced  by  his  failure,  to  the  point  where  nothing 
but  their  severance  of  all  ties  connecting  with  the 
old  life,  their  total  disappearance  like  a  pair  of 
absconding  criminals,  would  satisfy  her.  That 
58 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

rankled  frightfully.  He  didn't  know  whether  it 
was  more  maddening  to  believe  that  she  really 
meant  it,  or  that  she  had  said  it  merely  in  the  hope 
of  wounding  him  as  deeply  as  possible.  He  tried 
out  each  of  these  theories,  with  the  idea  of  discov 
ering  which  infuriated  him  the  worse,  and  at  last, 
although  they  were  mutually  contradictory,  com 
promised  by  adopting  them  both. 

It  was  not  until  the  train  pulled  into  the  ter 
minal  station  and  imposed  on  him  the  necessity  of 
deciding  what  he'd  do  next  that  he  regretfully 
clamped  down  the  lid  upon  this  pot  and,  as  it  were, 
took  it  off  the  fire.  A  real  rage  like  that  was  an 
unaccustomed  luxury  to  Alfred  Blair. 

But  he  must  now  turn  his  mind  to  more  prac 
tical  matters.  He  had  come  to  town  to  look  for  a 
job,  and  he  must  find  one  before  he  again  con 
fronted  Celia.  The  notion  of  going  back  to  her 
to-night  and  by  confessing  the  failure  of  his  quest, 
give  her  a  chance  to  drop  the  acid  of  pity  into  his 
wounds,  was  intolerable. 

He  realized  now  that  he  ought  to  have  spent 
59 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

those  waking  hours  before  he  came  down  to  break 
fast  to  better  advantage  than  in  sentimental  maun- 
derings  about  his  wife.  He  ought  to  have  laid  out 
a  plan  of  campaign.  When  he  had  said,  last  night, 
that  all  he  was  good  for  now  was  twenty-five  dollars 
a  week  or  so  over  a  drafting-board,  he'd  expressed 
an  emotion  rather  than  a  thought-out  plan.  And 
even  when  she'd  pressed  him  as  to  whether  he  could 
get  a  job  at  that,  he'd  answered,  "Yes,  I  guess  so," 
with  only  half  his  mind.  Surely  any  one  of  his 
former  competitors  would  see  that  he  was  worth 
that.  But  now  that  it  was  no  longer  a  case  for 
emotions  or  oratory,  simply  a  question  of  picking 
out  one  of  those  former  competitors,  going  to  him 
and  asking  for  a  job,  it  wasn't  so  easy. 

It  had  been  one  thing  to  tell  Celia,  last  night, 
that  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  rope ;  that  he  had  lost 
his  nerve,  and  that  all  he  was  good  for  was  a  routine 
job.  It  would  be  another  thing  to  go  into  the  office 
of  a  man  who  still  regarded  him  as  a  potentially 
formidable  rival  and  say  so. 

This  unexpected  flare-up  of  pride,  of  pride 
60 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

hardly  to  be  differentiated  from  Celia's  own,  discon 
certed  him  frightfully.  It  was  with  an  indescrib 
able  wrench  that  he  realized  how  much  easier  it 
would  be  to  apply  to  a  stranger  who  knew  nothing 
of  his  business  history  and  need  be  told  nothing  of 
it,  for  any  sort  of  job — street-sweeping,  coal- 
shoveling — than  to  submit  himself  to  the  half- 
kindly  contempt  of  an  inhabitant  of  his  own  world. 
He  tried  to  charge  this  feeling  up  to  Celia's  ac 
count  and  make  himself  believe  that  he  would  not 
have  felt  that  way  had  she  not  expressed  a  similar 
feeling,  but  he  couldn't  manage  it. 

It  was  without  any  objective  at  all  that  he  finally 
walked  out  of  the  station  and  turned  up  the  street. 
His  dread  of  going  with  his  story  to  any  one  who 
knew  him  became  absolutely  inhibitory  the  moment 
he  fixed  on  any  one  in  particular,  and  the  reflection 
came  to  him  as  a  real  relief  at  last,  that  such  an 
errand  wouldn't  do  any  good  anyway. 

What  would  have  been  his  own  attitude,  a  year 
ago,  to  such  a  request?  Supposing,  for  example, 
that  John  Abercrombie  had  come  to  him  like  that, 
61 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

said  he  was  down  and  out  and  wanted  a  twenty-five- 
dollar  job?  He'd  have  said  to  himself,  "Here!  If 
this  man  is  really  down  and  out,  he's  dear  at  any 
price.  He  won't  be  much  good  at  first,  and  he'll  get 
steadily  worse,  and  I'll  be  saddled  with  him.  But  if, 
as  is  more  likely,  he  comes  back,  then  he'll  leave  me 
and  go  in  for  himself  again  at  the  end  of  six  months 
or  so,  with  all  the  inside  dope  of  my  office  at  his 
finger-tips,  twice  as  dangerous  a  competitor  as  be 
fore." 

No,  he  knew  what  he'd  say  to  Abercrombie  in  these 
circumstances.  He'd  say,  in  the  most  optimistic 
manner  he  could  manage,  along  with  a  clap  on  the 
shoulder,  and  the  offer  of  a  cigar,  "Look  here,  old 
man.  You're  tired  out,  and  you've  got  a  touch  of 
liver.  You  forget  your  troubles  for  a  while  and 
take  a  good  rest.  Go  down  to  French  Lick  or  some 
where,  and  boil  out.  You  will  be  back  again  in 
three  months,  fit  to  give  any  of  us  a  run  for  our 
money.  But  this  twenty-five-dollar-a-week  stuff — 
forget  it."  And  that,  as  sure  as  to-morrow's  sun- 
62 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

rise,  was  what  Abercrombie  would  say  to  him  to 
day. 

He'd  been  wandering  aimlessly  along  all  the 
while,  stopping  every  now  and  then  to  stare  down 
into  a  building  excavation,  or  to  watch  an  automo 
bile  with  a  balky  motor  trying  to  start.  Now  his 
eye  was  caught  by  a  spectacle  almost  as  familiar 
to  Chicagoans — the  long  file  of  men  waiting  out 
side  one  of  the  afternoon  newspaper  offices  for  the 
first  edition,  in  order  that  they  might  be  the  first 
applicants  for  the  jobs  advertised  in  its  "Want" 
columns.  The  length  of  that  file  is  a  pretty  good 
barometer  to  business  conditions,  but,  good  times  or 
bad,  it  is  always  there.  And  Alfred  Blair,  without 
any  reflection  at  all,  just  because  there  it  was,  and 
here  he  was,  dropped  into  place  at  the  tail  of  it. 

Four  hours  or  so  later,  a  torn-out  bit  of  news 
paper  ready  for  reference  in  his  overcoat  pocket,  he 
was  conducted  by  an  office  boy  through  the  inde 
scribable  confusion  of  a  big,  dirty,  resonant  room, 
with  a  lot  of  drafting-tables  in  it,  many  of  them 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

unoccupied,  to  a  desk  in  the  corner,  where  sat  a 
lank,  oily-looking  man  in  his  shirt-sleeves. 

To  him,  Alfred  Blair  said,  "I  am  answering  your 
advertisement  for  a  draftsman." 

The  oily  man  was  just  back  from  lunch,  and  still, 
with  the  aid  of  a  tooth-pick,  ruminant  over  it.  He 
was  modeling  his  manners,  as  well  as  he  could,  on 
those  of  the  head  of  the  firm,  who  had  just  cashed 
in  on  his  loyalty  to  the  new  city  administration, 
with  a  fat  municipal  contract. 

The  superintendent  had  been  having  his  troubles, 
it  must  be  owned.  There  were  many  other  loyal 
souls  coming  around  to  be  taken  care  of.  But  a 
few  men  had  to  be  found  somewhere  who  knew  their 
business.  It  was  this  fact  that  had  led  to  the  in 
sertion  of  the  advertisement. 

The  superintendent  took  two  minutes,  perhaps, 
for  a  searching  and  hostile  stare  at  this  surprising 
applicant.  What  business  had  a  man  in  his  situa 
tion  to  wear  clothes  like  that? 

He  asked  at  last,  out  of  one  side  of  his  mouth, 
"What  experience  have  you  had?" 
64 


"I  am  answering  your  advertisement  for  a  draftsman  " 


"I'm  a  competent  draftsman,"  Blair  said.  "I 
can  do  anything  you  want  me  to." 

"Where'd  you  work  last?" 

Blair  said,  deliberately,  "I  don't  care  to  give  any 
references." 

The  superintendent  smiled — a  sneering  sort  of 
smile  that  expressed,  however,  real  pleasure.  The 
admission  restored  him  to  a  sense  of  his  own  su 
periority. 

"I  suppose  you're  a  booze-fighter,"  he  said  be 
hind  a  yawn,  "but  that  makes  no  odds  to  me,  if  you 
can  deliver  the  goods.  There's  about  six  weeks' 
or  two  months'  work.  Take  off  your  coat  and  sit 
down  over  there.  If  you're  any  good,  you've  got 
a  job.  Twenty  a  week." 

"I've  got  to  have  twenty-five,"  Blair  said. 

The  superintendent  waved  his  hand.  "Nothing 
doing."  But,  as  Blair  turned  away,  he  said, 
"Twenty-two  fifty." 

"All  right,"  Celia's  husband  agreed. 

It  was  not  until  half  past  five  that  he  had  an 
opportunity  to  telephone  Celia  from  a  nickel  phone 
65 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

in  a  down-town  drug-store.  In  a  more  observant 
mood  he  might  have  noted  that  his  ring  was  an 
swered  almost  instantly,  and  by  Celia  herself,  as  if 
she  had  been  waiting  there  at  her  desk  for  it. 

Also,  his  ear  might  have  detected  a  change  in  the 
quality  of  her  voice  between  her  first  "Hello !  What 
is  it?"  and  when  she  spoke  after  he'd  laconically 
told  her  he'd  got  a  job. 

"It's  only  twenty-two  fifty  a  week,  I'm  sorry  to 
say,"  he  added,  "instead  of  the  twenty-five  I  agreed 
to  get." 

"All  right.  I  won't  pay  more  than  twenty  a 
month  for  the  flat."  She  added,  "I've  rented  the 
house  to  the  Colliers  for  two  hundred.  I'm  to  call 
Ruth  up  again  and  tell  her  if  you  say  it's  all  right." 

"It's  quite  all  right  as  far  as  I'm  concerned,  of 
course,"  he  said.  "That  matter's  in  your  hands." 

He  didn't  know  whether  the  unclassifiable  sound 
he  heard  just  then  came  from  Celia  or  was  inserted 
in  the  conversation  by  the  telephone  company.  She 
asked  clearly  enough  the  next  moment,  if  he  were 
coming  home  to  dinner. 

66 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

"No,"  he  said.  "I  shall  be  at  the  office  until  late 
— my  old  office — packing  up." 

At  that  she  said  abruptly,  "Good-by." 

It  had  been  a  ghastly  day  for  Celia.  Months 
afterward,  when  she  could  look  back  on  the  episode 
as  a  whole,  she  sometimes  tried,  idly,  to  decide 
which  of  those  nightmare  days  was  the  worse — this, 
or  its  successor.  Oftenest  she  concluded  that  this 
one  was.  The  thing  that  gave  it  its  peculiar  hor 
ror  was  the  fact  that,  on  the  surface,  it  was  so  like 
an  ordinary  day ;  the  maids  coming  to  her  for  their 
routine  instructions,  the  housework  going  on,  peo 
ple  calling  her  up  and  asking  her  to  do  amusing 
things,  just  as  though  she  were  still  the  secure, 
imperturbable,  unruffled  Celia  she  had  been  yester 
day,  and  that  she  had  still  to  seem  to-day. 

She  called  up  Ruth  Collier  as  early  as  was  decent 
in  the  morning,  and  told  her,  as  she  had  declared 
to  Fred  she  would,  that  they'd  decided  overnight 
to  go  away.  He  was  frightfully  tired,  hadn't  been 
sleeping,  was  on  the  edge  of  a  bad  smash,  and  be 
fore  it  came,  they  were  going  to  bolt. 
67 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

"Oh,  we  don't  know  where.  Disappear  some 
where  for  a  good  long  while — a  year,  maybe.  And 
— this  is  why  I'm  telling  you  about  it — we  want 
you  to  take  our  house.  You  really  are  looking  for 
one,  aren't  you?  Well,  then,  come  out  to-day  and 
look  at  this  with  that  idea.  About  noon  ?  Oh,  then 
you  will  stop  for  lunch.  That'll  be  fine.  Just  the 
two  of  us." 

She  could  make  her  voice  sound  all  right,  any 
how,  that  was  one  comfort.  She  was  sure  from 
the  way  Ruth  talked  she  had  suspected  nothing 
over  the  phone.  But  whether  the  resources  of  her 
toilet-table  were  going  to  prove  sufficient  to  obliter 
ate  from  her  face  the  traces  of  last  night's  and  this 
morning's  tempests,  she  wasn't  so  sure.  She  went 
to  work,  deliberately  and  methodically,  to  produce 
this  result. 

All  the  while,  she  nursed  her  wrath  against  her 
husband,  as  one  nurses  a  dying  fire.  It  was  her 
one  defense  against  him — the  one  thing  that  would 
enable  her  to  see  the  day  through.  If  ever  she  got 
to  feeling  sorry  for  him,  to  thinking  about  that 
68 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

haggard  beaten  look  she  had  seen  in  his  face  last 
night,  she  knew  she  was  lost.  She'd  carried  her 
jewel-box,  still  in  its  cumbersome  wrapper,  to  her 
room,  and  whenever  necessary,  she  glanced  at  it.  It 
always  worked. 

Half  an  hour  before  Ruth's  expected  arrival  the 
cook  brought  in  word  that  a  man  was  at  the  kitchen 
door  asking  permission  to  do  any  sort  of  odd  job 
for  a  meal.  It  was  a  common  sort  of  occurrence. 
But  to-day  it  stabbed  her  with  an  almost  intolerable 
pang — the  thought  that  her  husband  was  to-day, 
at  this  very  moment,  perhaps,  doing  the  same  thing, 
knocking  at  strange  inhospitable  doors,  asking  for 
work. 

Anger  flared  up  again,  though,  and  saved  her. 
It  wasn't  her  fault,  was  it,  that  he  had  assumed 
that  her  interest  in  him  was  wholly  mercenary,  and 
had  gone  on  keeping  her  in  ignorance  of  the  true 
state  of  affairs  until  it  had  come  to  this?  It  was 
not.  So,  though  she  toppled  for  an  instant  on  the 
verge  of  an  emotional  abyss,  she  managed  to  keep 
her  balance.  She  managed  to  maintain  it,  too,  with- 
69 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

out  a  break,  during  the  two  hours  and  a  half  that 
her  guest  and  prospective  tenant  stayed. 

While  she  could  do  the  talking  herself  it  was 
comparatively  easy — phrases  just  cool  enough,  in 
different  enough,  frivolously  humorous  enough, 
came  readily  to  her  lips,  even  while  she  went 
through  the  mockery  of  speculating  about  what  she 
and  Fred  would  do  with  their  year's  vacation,  chat 
ting  about  California  and  Honolulu.  But  while 
Ruth  talked,  she  couldn't  keep  her  mind  on  the 
things  her  guest  was  saying.  It  would  bolt  freak 
ishly  in  unexpected  directions,  flash  terrifying  pos 
sibilities  before  her  eyes,  stab  her  with  memories, 
and  she  would  frantically  summon  her  anger  to  the 
rescue  and  repel  these  assaults. 

After  Ruth  had  gone,  she  tried  to  pack.  There 
was  an  immense  lot  of  work  to  do,  of  course,  get 
ting  things  out  of  the  way  and  putting  the  house 
in  shape  for  the  reception  of  its  new  occupants. 
But  she  didn't  make  much  headway — couldn't  give 
her  mind  to  it.  It  was  focused  on  the  telephone, 
and  that  focus  kept  getting  sharper  and  sharper 
70 


THE    MORNING    AFTER 

all  the  time.  He'd  said  he'd  call  up  in  the  after 
noon  to  let  her  know  what  luck  he'd  had.  Evi 
dently  he  hadn't  got  his  job  yet.  Suppose,  in  his 
discouragement  and  despair,  he  decided  that  it 
wasn't  worth  trying  to  get.  By  half  past  five, 
when  he  did  call  up,  she  was  about  at  the  end  of 
her  endurance. 

But  his  way  of  telling  her  just  the  bare  facts 
and  nothing  more,  his  infuriating  apology  for  hav 
ing  accepted  twenty-two  fifty,  when  he'd  told  her 
he'd  get  twenty-five,  and  the  way  he'd  washed  his 
hands  of  her  bargain  with  the  Colliers,  toned  her 
up  once  more — gave  her  a  good  warm  glow  of 
anger  to  go  to  work  on.  She  was  glad  he  wasn't 
coming  home  to  dinner.  She  wouldn't  see  him 
again,  if  it  were  possible.  She'd  have  no  communi 
cation  with  him,  except  what  was  absolutely  indis 
pensable,  until  she  could  confront  him  in  the  new 
home  his  contemptuous  disbelief  in  her  had  reduced 
them  to. 

He  disconcerted  her  a  little,  though  she  didn't 
admit  it  to  herself,  by  apparently  wanting  the  same 
71 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

thing  she  did — making  no  effort,  at  any  rate,  to 
see  her.  He  made  her  heart  jump  by  pausing  an 
instant  outside  her  door — it  wasn't  locked — when 
he  came  home  very  late  that  night,  but  he  went  on, 
without  a  word,  to  his  own  room.  He'd  already 
left  for  town  when  she  came  down-stairs  the  next 
morning,  and  this  program  was  repeated  for  two 
days  more.  They  communicated  with  each  other 
by  leaving  notes  about — politely  laconic  notes, 
which  they  fancied  Marie  wouldn't  see  anything 
wrong  with.  Though  why  Marie  should  matter,  it 
would  be  hard  to  say,  since  she,  along  with  the 
cook,  had  had  her  notice  and  her  two  weeks'  pay, 
and  was  leaving  Saturday  morning  when  the  Col 
liers  were  coming  in. 


CHAPTER  IV 

EXPLORATION 

IT  was  on  Wednesday  that  Alfred  got  his  job, 
and  that  Ruth  Collier  came  out  to  lunch  and 
agreed  to  take  the  house.  On  Thursday  morning — 
not  more  than  an  hour  after  her  husband's  depart 
ure,  Celia  herself  set  out,  on  a  very  inadequate 
breakfast,  and  in  very  inadequate  shoes,  to  find  a 
flat  that  could  be  rented  for  not  more  than  twenty 
dollars  a  month. 

She  had  been  vague  as  to  what  methods  she 
should  pursue  toward  this  result,  until,  coming 
down-stairs  to  get  her  coffee,  she  had  happened  upon 
Marie  carrying  off  the  last  night's  paper  that 
Alfred  had  brought  home.  She  had  never  made  use 
of  classified  advertising;  had  always  thought  of  it 
merely  as  something  that  added  an  irritating  bulk 
to  the  newspapers  she  occasionally  read.  But  a 
73 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

memory  of  the  legend — Flats  to  rent — at  the  head 
of  interminable  columns  of  fine  print,  came  up  sud 
denly  in  her  mind,  and  she  impounded  the  rumpled 
and  disordered  sheets  Marie  was  carrying  out.  A 
cursory  glance  at  them  as  she  sipped  her  coffee 
made  her  quest  look  easy.  There  were  millions  of 
flats  for  rent,  apparently,  and  they  were  arranged 
according  to  neighborhood — West  Side  flats  to 
gether  by  themselves,  two  or  three  columns  of  them. 

She  tore  this  part  out  of  the  sheet,  and  after 
satisfying  herself  that  it  listed  plenty  of  places  at 
twenty  dollars,  and  less,  she  crumpled  it  into  her 
wrist-bag  and  went  on  with  her  breakfast,  that  is 
to  say,  with  her  coffee.  These  had,  for  many  years, 
been  synonymous  terms  to  Celia.  How  Alfred  could 
eat  things  like  liver  and  sausage,  or  even  eggs,  at 
this  time  of  the  day,  she  had  never  been  able  to 
understand. 

Her  idea  was,  when,  in  the  train,  she  got  out  her 

list  and  looked  at  it,  that  she  would  select  a  place  at 

the  price  she  wanted,  go  out  to  it,  and  rent  it.     She 

wasn't  looking  for  luxury.    She  hoped — or  thought 

74 


EXPLORATION 

she  hoped,  sitting  there  comfortably  enough  in  the 
train,  that  it  would  prove  as  uncomfortable,  and 
cramped  and  mean  as  possible.  The  meaner  it  was, 
and  the  more  destitute  of  comforts  the  life  they  had 
to  live  in  it,  the  more  triumphantly  could  she  dem 
onstrate  to  Alfred  that  he  had  misjudged  her — the 
more  completely  avenge  his  insulting  beh'ef  that 
now  he  was  poor,  she  would  abandon  him  and  begin 
a  bright  lookout  for  somebody  else. 

So  she  picked  out,  more  or  less  at  random,  some 
thing  she  thought  would  do,  and  dismissed  the 
matter  from  her  mind.  It  didn't  occur  to  her,  until 
after  she  got  off  the  train  in  the  terminal,  that  she 
hadn't  the  least  idea  where  the  address  was,  or  how 
to  get  to  it.  Then,  under  the  spur  of  necessity,  she 
went  to  the  information  desk  and  asked  the  man. 

He  wasn't  looking  at  her,  and  his  answer  was  a 
gesture  toward  a  tattered — a  vilely  dirty — volume 
on  the  shelf  at  her  elbow,  which  she  made  out  to  be 
a  City  Directory. 

It  is  fair  to  say  that  Celia's  first  step  into  her 
new  world  began  at  that  moment.  She  had  never, 
75 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

in  her  life,  been  compelled  to  submit  to  contact  with 
anything  as  repulsively  filthy  as  that  volume. 

She  opened  it  and  stared  at  it  helplessly. 

"But,"  she  said,  "I  don't  want  to  know  what 
street  and  number  any  one  lives  in.  I  want  to  know 
where  a  certain  address  is." 

"Street  Index,"  he  said.  Then,  with  a  look  at 
her,  relented.  "Here !  I'll  find  it  for  you." 

But  the  search  was  a  rather  complicated  one  and 
he  was  interrupted  three  or  four  times  before  he 
got  to  the  end  of  it,  by  impatient  train-catchers, 
and  the  directions  he  finally  gave  her  were  not  very 
enlightening — involved  questioning  conductors  as 
to  where  to  take  transfers  and  asking  a  policeman, 
when  she  finally  got  in  the  general  neighborhood, 
which  way  to  walk. 

The  morning  was  half  gone  when  she  finally 
found  the  place.  She'd  walked  what  seemed  miles ; 
her  feet  ached  excruciatingly,  she  felt  worse  than 
dirty — contaminated  by  the  last  street-car  she'd 
ridden  in,  and  she  couldn't  be  sure  she'd  got  a 
cinder  out  of  her  eye. 

76 


EXPLORATION 

But  the  place  she  found  had  at  least  the  merit 
of  making  her  forget  these  minor  troubles. 

The  terrifying  thing  about  it  was  that  it  was 
not  so  bad.  She  was  escorted  through  it  by  the 
tenant  of  the  flat  below,  who  had  charge  of  the 
key,  and  this  lady  praised  it  with  genuine  enthu 
siasm.  She  pointed  out  that  the  floors  weren't 
badly  worn  at  all,  and  had  recently  been  coated 
with  shellac;  she  indicated  the  soundness  of  the 
plaster.  Nothing  would  come  falling  down  on  your 
head  here,  even  if  the  tenants  of  the  topmost  flat 
of  all  should  rouse  round  a  bit.  There  was  a  radi 
ator  in  each  of  the  four  rooms,  and  the  heat  was 
ample.  They,  down  below,  frequently  had  to  open 
a  window  somewhere  for  a  while.  It  actually  got 
too  hot.  The  front  room  had  two  windows  looking 
on  the  street,  the  kitchen,  at  the  back,  got  the 
benefit  not  only  of  its  own  back  yard,  but  of  the 
vacant  lot  behind  it  on  the  next  street,  while  the 
two  middle  rooms,  thanks  to  the  fact  that  the  ad 
joining  building  ran  up  only  two  stories,  were  at 
the  top  of  the  light-well,  and  were  almost  as  good 
77 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

as  outside  rooms.  She  was  sure  it  was  a  bargain 
at  the  money,  and  Celia,  with  a  sinking  heart,  was 
forced  to  conclude  that  it  was. 

Because  it  came  over  her,  in  a  wave,  that  she 
couldn't  stand  it.  There  was  a  soul-blighting  ugli 
ness  in  everything  about  it — the  shape  of  each  of 
the  four  cramped,  mean  little  rooms,  the  mean  little 
doors  by  which  they  opened  out,  one  after  another, 
on  a  mean  little  four-foot  corridor  that  strung  them 
together,  the  artificial  oak  graining  of  the  wood 
work,  the  fanciful  hideousness  of  the  gas-fixtures 
in  the  front  room,  and  the  water-mottled  oak  man 
tel.  Celia's  cicerone  admitted  freely  that  the  fire 
place  this  mantel  enclosed  was  not  practicable,  but 
pointed  out  that  fires  were  a  nuisance  anyway,  and 
that  in  this  flat,  with  an  abundance  of  the  hottest 
kind  of  steam-heat,  they  were,  happily,  unneces 
sary.  In  the  dead  of  winter,  a  little  cotton  tucked 
into  the  two  west  windows  made  everything  as 
snug  and  tight  as  one  could  desire. 

Celia  escaped  from  it  in  a  good  deal  of  panic, 
like  a  fly  out  of  a  web,  with  the  allegation  of  the 
78 


EXPLORATION 

fictitious  necessity  of  bringing  her  husband  for  a 
look  at  it  before  she  decided  anything.  Her  new 
friend  understood  the  necessity,  but  regretted  it. 
A  bargain  like  this  was  likely  to  be  snapped  up  at 
any  minute.  What  Celia  said  to  herself,  when  she 
stood  panting  on  the  sidewalk,  was  that  she  could 
stand  a  slum,  but  she  couldn't  stand  that. 

The  fact  was,  of  course,  that  a  slum  was  simply 
a  literary  expression  to  her,  an  idea  made  up  of 
descriptions  from  two  or  three  "realistic"  novels, 
and  the  stage-sets  of  three  or  four  lugubrious 
plays.  But  this  flat  she  had  been  looking  at  was 
not  realistic.  It  was  real.  And  it  brought  down 
upon  her  an  ominous  sickening  realization  of  what 
married  life  on  a  salary  of  twenty-two  dollars  and 
fifty  cents  a  week  might  mean;  not  as  the  subject 
of  an  acrimonious  scene  between  her  and  Alfred  in 
the  interval  between  an  excellent  dinner  and  their 
retirement  to  two  comfortable  beds,  but  as  a  thing 
to  be  endured  for  months  —  years  —  forever,  per 
haps. 

She  began  walking  slowly  in  the  direction  of  the 
79 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

nearest  car  line,  and  as  she  walked  the  idea  insin 
uated  itself  into  her  mind  that,  if  she  couldn't  stand 
it,  she  needn't.  There  was  that  comfortable  home 
she  had  lived  in  for  years  before  her  marriage, 
where,  with  any  excuse  at  all,  or  indeed  with  none, 
they'd  be  glad  to  welcome  her.  There  was  her 
room;  there  was  her  place  at  the  table.  And 
wouldn't  it  be  better  to  go  back  to  it?  Wouldn't 
she  be  an  unnecessary  drag  on  Fred  if  she  insisted 
on  taking  him  out  to  a  place  like  that  flat?  Twen 
ty-two  dollars  and  a  half  a  week,  to  a  man  with 
no  domestic  responsibilities,  would  be  comfortable 
enough.  He'd  suggested  that  himself. 

She  got  as  far  as  that,  but  no  further,  for  a 
wave  of  good  honest  wrath  came  surging  over  her 
again.  That's  what  he'd  expected  her  to  think! 
That  was  the  incredibly,  cowardly,  mercenary 
wretch  he'd  believed  her!  And  he'd  been  nearer 
right  than  she  knew.  Well,  he  should  never 
know  it. 

The  tears  came  smarting  into  her  eyes  so  that 
she  had  to  stop,  there  in  the  middle  of  the  sidewalk, 
80 


EXPLORATION 

with  two  or  three  curious  idlers  staring  at  her,  and 
get  out  her  handkerchief  and  mop  before  she  could 
see  to  go  on.  She'd  show  him !  She'd  find  a  place 
somewhere — to-day ! 

At  four  o'clock,  more  tired  than  she  had  ever 
been  before  in  her  life,  thoroughly  discouraged, 
but  still  determined  not  to  go  home  until  she'd 
found  a  place  where  she  and  Alfred  could  go  on 
living  together,  giddy  with  hunger,  though  she 
realized  very  imperfectly  how  much  hunger  had  to 
do  with  her  exhaustion,  she  turned  into  a  little 
lunch  room. 

She  wanted  food  for  its  own  sake.  But  more 
than  that,  she  wanted  it  as  an  excuse  for  sitting 
down.  She  must  have  a  little  rest  before  she  could 
walk  another  step.  She  was  down  to  bedrock  for 
the  first  time  in  her  life. 

If  the  uncounted  apartments  she'd  looked  at  since 
that  first  one  hadn't  by  themselves  affected  her  so 
strongly  as  that  first  one  had,  they  had  at  least 
rubbed  that  feeling  in.  She'd  wasted  a  good  deal  of 
energy  climbing  flights  of  stairs  to  places  that  had 
81 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

cost  more  than  her  maximum,  going  up  a  bit  at  a 
time,  without  realizing  what  she  was  doing,  until  she 
caught  herself  on  the  edge  of  taking  a  place  that 
cost  thirty-five  dollars  a  month.  When  she  dropped 
back  from  this,  the  twenty-dollar  places  looked 
worse  than  ever.  All  her  fine  sensibilities  had  been 
scraped  and  rasped  by  the  sound  of  voices  she  had 
been  hearing — the  intonations  of  speech — the  way 
people  wore  their  clothes.  She  was  more  than  blue. 
She  was  black  and  blue. 

That  was  the  color  of  the  world  when  she  sat 
down  in  the  little  lunch  room.  She'd  have  thought 
that  it  was  impossible  that  she  could  ever  smile 
again.  But  she  did  within  half  a  minute. 

Her  opening  of  the  street  door  had  rung  a  little 
bell,  and  she  had  heard  through  the  plain  white 
board  partition  that  cut  the  place  transversely  half 
way  back,  a  groan  and  a  sort  of  grunting  yawn. 
A  door  in  this  partition  had  opened  almost  imme 
diately  and  she'd  caught  a  glimpse  of  a  man  with 
out  a  coat  or  collar,  in  the  act  of  finishing  the 
82 


EXPLORATION 

stretch  the  yawn  had  been  preliminary  to.  But 
the  door  had  closed  again  instantly,  leaving  the 
man  on  the  other  side. 

But  within  half  a  minute,  as  I  said,  he  appeared 
again,  this  time  most  decorously  clad  in  a  white 
jacket  with  a  military  collar.  He  had,  too,  rather 
a  military  air  of  standing  at  attention — of,  indeed, 
always  having  stood  at  attention,  absurdly  at  vari 
ance  with  his  appearance  of  the  moment  before. 
But  there  was  a  bright  engaging  twinkle  in  his  eye 
that  candidly  confessed  the  absurdity. 

Involuntarily  Celia  smiled  at  him.  He'd  evi 
dently  had  red  hair  once,  but  it  was  now  a  dusty 
gray,  and  his  clean-shaven  sanguine  face  was  finely 
netted  all  over  with  wrinkles.  And  if  he  wasn't 
Irish,  then  there  isn't  an  Irishman  in  County  Clare. 
When  he  asked,  "What  can  I  do  for  you,  Miss?" 
she  said,  rather  to  her  own  surprise,  "I'm  afraid  I 
interrupted  your  nap." 

"Well,  an'  that's  true,  too,"  he  admitted.  "I've 
no  key  for  that  door,  and  I  keep  the  place  open 
83 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

day  and  night.  And,  as  we  haven't  many  demands 
for  afternoon  tea  in  these  parts,  I  generally  indulge 
myself  as  you  have  discovered." 

Just  the  sound  of  his  mellow,  pleasantly  modu 
lated  voice,  with  the  slight  enrichment  of  its  con 
sonants  that  suggested  a  brogue  without  actually 
constituting  it,  was  indescribably  friendly  and 
soothing  to  her  worn  nerves. 

"I  hadn't  thought  of  tea,"  she  said.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  address  him  in  any  other  tone  than 
the  one  she  would  use  for  a  social  equal.  "You  see, 
I  forgot  all  about  lunch.  I  suppose  it's  too  late 
for  that,  though." 

He  professed  himself  ready  to  prepare  her  as 
elaborate  a  meal  as  she  wanted,  but  pointed  out  that 
the  elaboration  would  take  time.  If  instant  relief 
was  called  for,  he'd  suggest  a  pot  of  tea  and  a 
fried-egg  sandwich. 

This  was  a  viand  that,  as  it  happened,  she  had 
never  heard  of,  and  the  notion  of  it  visibly  amused 
her.     But  she  was  a  little  dubious  about  the  tea. 
Not  that  she  didn't  like  tea,  but — 
84 


EXPLORATION 

"You  needn't  fear  my  brew,"  he  assured  her. 
"Tea's  a  tipple  I  thoroughly  understand." 

Five  minutes  later,  with  a  contented  sigh  more 
eloquent  than  words,  she  acknowledged  the  justice 
of  this  boast.  She  had  kind  words,  too,  for  the 
sandwich. 

He  deprecated  her  praise  while  visibly  basking 
in  it,  but  admitted  that  there  was  a  considerable 
degree  of  art  involved  in  the  proper  frying  of  an 

egg- 

Her  eyes  widened  a  little  as  she  said,  half  under 

her  breath,  "I  wonder  if  I  could  fry  one  at  all." 

"Well,  there's  great  folly,"  he  said,  "in  knowing 
too  many  things.  Take  myself,  for  example.  I'm 
a  bit  of  a  cook,  carpenter,  ladies'  maid,  farrier, 
plumber  and  gas-fitter  and  infant's  nurse,  to  men 
tion  a  few  accomplishments  that  come  to  mind — 
and  here  I  am !" 

"How  in  the  world — ?"  she  gasped. 
"Fourteen  years  in  the  army,  ma'am.     That's 
the  explanation.     Too  good  an  officer's  striker  ever 
to  be  anything  else." 

85 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

She  didn't  know  quite  what  to  say  to  this,  since 
in  spite  of  the  humorous  melancholy  of  his  voice, 
condolence  seemed  not  to  be  asked  for.  So  she 
munched  her  fried-egg  sandwich  in  silence  for  a 
minute  or  two,  and  finally  remarked: 

"You  didn't  say  you're  a  real-estate  agent, 
though,  and  that's  what  I  need.  I'm  looking  for  a 
place  out  here — a  flat,  I  suppose,  where  two  people 
with  hardly  any  money  at  all  can  live." 

"Well,"  he  said,  "there  are  plenty  of  places  out 
here  where  people  with  hardly  any  money  at  all  do 
live,  and  more  perhaps  where  they  could.  But  I'd 
be  better  able  to  help  you  if  I  knew  just  how  much 
money  you  meant  by  'hardly  any  at  all.' " 

"I  mean  twenty-two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  a 
week,"  she  said  with  such  unexpected  promptness 
and  precision,  and  with  a  tinge  of  defiance  thrown 
in,  that  she  made  him  smile. 

"Well,  there's  nothing  easier  than  that,"  he  told 

her.    "I  know  of  a  fine  little  place  just  around  the 

corner  that  you  can  get  for  twelve  dollars  a  month. 

They  could  live  there  as  snugly  as  you  please. 

86 


EXPLORATION 

Three  rooms  and  bath,  and  one  of  them  a  fine  large 
one." 

"Twelve  dollars  a  month!"  she  echoed.  "And 
I've  been  looking  at  places  all  day  about  twenty, 
and  they  were  horrible !" 

He  shot  a  keen  look  at  her.  "Well,  I  wouldn't 
say,"  he  admitted,  "that  it's  a  place  you'd  be  carin' 
to  live  in  yourself.  And  it's  possible,  too,  since  it's 
been  on  my  hands  three  months — ever  since  my 
brother-in-law's  second  wife  married  again  and 
moved  away  to  Kansas  City,  that  I  exaggerate  the 
good  points  of  it.  But  you  might  find  it  worth  a 
look,  and  if  you  don't  mind  waiting  till  my  daugh 
ter  comes  back  from  school,  which  will  be  any  min 
ute  now,  to  look  after  this  place,  I'll  take  you  up 
there  and  show  you  around." 

In  the  five  minutes  or  so  that  intervened  late  that 
night  between  the  time  when  Celia  got  into  bed  and 
the  time  when  she  fell  asleep  the  conviction  estab 
lished  itself  in  her  mind  that,  if  Mr.  Lawrence 
Doyle  had  not  actually  hypnotized  her,  it  had  at 
least  been  the  glamour  of  his  personal  charms  and 
87 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

not  the  desirability  of  the  twelve-dollar  apartment 
he  had  shown  her  round,  that  had  led  her  to  take  it 
not  only  promptly  but  with  enthusiasm. 

It  did  indeed  comprise,  as  he  had  said,  three 
rooms  and  a  bath  (though  the  "bath"  required  a 
qualifying  foot-note),  and  it  was  also  true  that  the 
largest  of  the  three  rooms  was,  in  actual  feet  and 
inches,  commodious  and  pleasantly  proportioned. 
Even  for  the  combined  functions  of  eating  and  "liv 
ing"  it  would  be  ample. 

What  shook  Celia's  confidence  in  her  judg 
ment  was  the  recollection  of  her  enthusiasm  over 
the  absence  of  the  steam  heat  and  the  presence 
instead  of  a  "base-burner"  which  Doyle  would 
be  glad  of  a  chance  to  sell  her  for  six  dollars 
and  seventy -five  cents.  There  was  nothing  like  a 
good  old-fashioned  coal  fire  for  comfort.  This 
steam  heat,  now;  always  too  much  or  not  enough, 
and  nothing  to  do  about  it  but  pound  the  radiator 
with  a  poker.  A  good  coal-stove  you  ran  to  suit 
yourself — or  rather,  it  ran  itself  to  suit  you.  Also 
she  was  able  to  recall  a  sensation  of  genuine  delight 
88 


EXPLORATION 

over  a  gas-pipe  in  the  kitchen,  which  would  not  only 
reduce  culinary  labors  to  next  to  nothing,  by  mak 
ing  it  possible  to  cook  with  gas,  but,  for  a  trifling 
additional  investment  in  a  small  boiler  and  heater, 
one  could  have  hot  water  whenever  one  wanted  it, 
day  or  night.  Celia,  who  had  all  her  life  taken  hot 
water  for  granted,  exactly  as  she  had  taken  air  to 
breathe,  was  quite  thrilled  over  this. 

She  had  taken  an  inexplicable  pleasure,  too,  in 
the  fact  that  their  bedroom — it  was  really  nothing 
but  an  alcove  off  the  big  room,  capable  of  being 
shut  off  by  curtains,  and  just  about  big  enough  to 
contain  a  double  bed — was  up  two  steepish  steps 
from  the  main  floor-level — a  concession  to  the  ne 
cessity  for  getting  the  stairs  up  from  the  entry 
below.  Most  unreasonable  of  all  was  her  delight  in 
the  obvious  fact  that  the  bathroom  had  clearly  not 
been  designed  by  the  architect  to  serve  that  pur 
pose.  It  had  three  doors,  to  begin  with,  all  glazed ; 
one  into  the  big  room,  one  into  the  kitchen  and  one 
which  let  you  out  on  the  back  porch — quite  an  ex 
tensive  back  porch,  formed  by  flooring  over  and 
89 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

railing  in  a  one-story  extension  at  the  back  of  the 
building.  The  door  into  the  kitchen  had  been  ren 
dered  impracticable  by  the  installation  of  the  tub 
— a  large,  circular,  galvanized  iron  tub — which  Mr. 
Doyle  pointed  to  with  pride  as  a  demonstration 
of  his  prowess  as  a  plumber,  for  he  had  done  this 
job  himself  and  knew  it  was  good.  The  pipes  came 
simply  and  naively  through  a  hole  in  the  kitchen 
wall. 

Celia  had  been  aware,  even  when  striking  her 
bargain  with  Mr.  Doyle,  that  these  unique  advan 
tages  were  not,  perhaps,  the  sort  that  would  appeal 
instantly  to  every  mind,  and  that  the  place  required 
to  be  seen  with  an  eye.  Given  time  to  reflect,  she 
might  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  she  liked 
it  all  just  for  the  same  unreasonable  reason  that 
had  made  her  hate  the  dozens  of  modern,  mean,  ma 
chine-made  places  she  had  been  looking  at  all  day. 
This  place  would  make  poverty  picturesque. 

She  hadn't  any  leisure  for  reflection,  though,  be 
cause  of  a  remark  Mr.  Doyle  made  just  after  the 
bargain  had  been  struck.  He  said  that  if  she'd 
90 


EXPLORATION 

let  him  hire  a  man  to  go  to  cleaning  first  thing  in 
the  morning,  her  friends  could  move  their  furniture 
in  the  next  afternoon.  And  the  word  furniture  had 
brought  her  up  with  a  jerk.  Her  mind  had  been 
running  on  a  single  track  and  it  hadn't  got  to  the 
furniture  yet. 

She  told  Mr.  Doyle  to  go  ahead  and  get  the 
cleaner,  left  him  on  a  promise  to  turn  up  some  time 
the  next  day,  and  settled  down  in  a  street-car, 
homeward  bound,  to  wrestle  with  this  new  problem. 

She  couldn't  use  any  of  their  own  furniture. 
The  Colliers  would  want  every  stick  of  it.  Every 
thing  must  be  bought  new.  She  had,  at  first,  only 
a  vague  idea  of  how  much  this  operation  would  cost. 
But  presently,  out  of  nowhere,  an  advertisement 
that  had  once  adorned  the  bill-boards  came  up  into 
her  memory. 

"We  will  feather  your  nest,"  it  had  read,  "for 
one  hundred  dollars."  She  was  grateful  for  the 
figure,  though  she  meant  to  do  her  own  feathering. 
But  where  was  she  going  to  get  the  hundred  dol 
lars  ? 

91 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

Well,  there  was  the  first  month's  rent  on  their 
own  house — two  hundred  dollars  payable  in  ad 
vance.  The  sensible  easy  thing  to  do  would  be  to 
go  ahead  and  get  what  she  wanted,  at  once,  of  one 
of  the  big  department  stores  where  they  had  a 
charge  account,  and  let  the  Colliers'  check  cover 
it.  But  this  didn't  satisfy  her.  That  two  hundred 
a  month  rent  was  sacred  to  the  payment  of  old  bills. 
For  other  purposes  it  should  be  treated  as  if  it 
didn't  exist.  If  ever  she  began  dipping  into  that, 
where  would  her  vengeance  on  Alfred  be — her  tri 
umphant  demonstration  that  he'd  misjudged  her? 

The  next  possibility  she  thought  of  was  of  buy 
ing  it  on  the  instalment  plan.  She  could  ask  Fred 
to  appropriate  so  much  a  week  out  of  his  salary 
to  pay  it  off.  But  this  would  involve  taking  her 
husband  in  on  it,  and  she  didn't  like  the  idea.  She 
wanted  something  to  hurl  at  him  complete.  If  she 
were  to  go  to  him  with  the  problem  he'd  be  entitled 
to  a  say  as  to  what  she  bought.  It  would  give  him 
another  opportunity  to  act  generously  and  feel  ag 
grieved,  which,  she  told  herself  passionately,  she 
92 


EXPLORATION 

never  meant  to  give  him  again.  No,  somehow  she 
must  find  that  hundred  dollars  herself. 

Well,  then  she  thought  of  her  jewelry.  It  would 
be  no  trick  at  all  to  sell  one  of  her  good  rings  for 
a  hundred  dollars. 

But  she  rejected  this  idea  with  violence.  She'd 
done  the  only  thing  self-respect  would  allow  her  to 
do,  after  that  maddening  insult  of  his,  in  giving 
all  that  jewelry  back  to  him.  The  fact  that  he  had 
refused  to  accept  it  didn't  alter  the  essentials  of 
the  case.  The  stuff  was  his,  every  scrap  of  it. 
The  box,  still  in  its  paper  wrapping,  must  be  kept 
intact ;  slipped  unobtrusively  in  among  his  belong 
ings,  perhaps,  after  they  had  got  settled  in  the  flat 
— at  all  events,  demonstrably  untouched. 

But  where  was  she  going  to  get  her  hundred 
dollars?  She  thought  for  a  while  that  she'd  ex 
hausted  all  the  possibilities,  and  her  mind  slipped 
off  on  a  new  tack. 

Specifically,  just  what  articles  of  furniture  would 
the  flat  need?  Her  mind's  eye  dwelt  once  more 
upon  its  three  rooms  and  bath,  and  it  occurred  to 
93 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

her  then  that  there  wasn't  a  closet  in  the  place. 
What  in  the  world  would  she  do  with  all  her  clothes  ? 
At  that  she  drew  in  a  little  gasp  of  excitement 
and  let  out  a  sigh  of  relief.  She  knew  now  where 
she  could  get  her  hundred  dollars.  It  was  a  perfect 
solution.  Fred  wouldn't  have  a  leg  to  stand  on. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  NEW  WOELD 

CELIA  began  operations  Friday  morning — 
early  Friday  morning,  be  it  said,  before  Al 
fred  had  finished  breakfast — and  he  had  to  take  the 
seven-eighteen  these  days,  in  order  to  get  down  to 
his  job  on  time — with  a  very  careful  and  deliberate 
toilet.  It  was  the  first  time  she  had  paid  any  at 
tention  to  her  looks  since  she  had  donned  her  armor 
for  Ruth  Collier's  visit  on  Wednesday. 

At  a  quarter  to  eight,  just  after  Marie  had 
brought  up  her  coffee  and  toast,  the  door-bell  rang. 

"Oh,  that's — !"  Celia  began,  then  checked  her 
self.  "Go  down  and  see  who  it  is,"  she  directed. 

She  took  a  last  swift  reassuring  look  into  her 
mirror  as  the  maid  descended  the  stairs,  then  rather 
carefully  arranged  herself  in  the  big  chair  behind 
the  slim  little  table  where  Marie  had  deposited  her 
tray.  She  broke  off  a  bit  of  toast,  but  didn't  eat 
95 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

it ;  sat  listening  to  what  was  happening  at  the  now 
open  door.  A  man  with  a  brusk  colloquial  idiom, 
and  a  strongly  Oriental  accent,  was  trying  to  con 
vince  Marie  that  he  had  important  business  with  her 
mistress.  Marie,  it  seemed,  was  not  trying  to  con 
ceal  her  misgivings  about  him,  which  were  of  the 
darkest  sort.  But  eventually  she  let  him  in  and 
came  up  to  Celia  with  a  card. 

Celia  dropped  a  negligent  glance  upon  the  not 
immaculate  face  of  it,  and  said,  "Oh,  yes.  He 
wants  to  buy  some  clothes  of  mine.  Bring  him  up. 
And,  Marie,"  she  added  as  the  girl  turned  away, 
"don't  leave  the  room  till  he  does."  Then,  with  a 
fine  exterior  calm,  she  took  the  first  sip  of  her  coffee. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  she  was  a  little  fright 
ened.  And  yet  there  was  something  pleasurable 
about  her  excitement,  too.  A  new  combination  of 
emotions  for  Celia  French.  She  had  never  been  an 
adventurer.  • 

But  then,  everything  about  her  present  situation 
was  new.  It  was  a  new  thing  to  need — absolutely 
to  need — a  hundred  dollars.  It  was  a  new  thing 
96 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

to  be  thrown,  definitely  and  unescapably,  upon  her 
own  resources  for  getting  it.  Consequently  the 
thrilling  excitement  attendant  upon  her  discovery 
of  a  way  to  get  it  was  also  new. 

After  her  first  gasp  of  relief  when  it  occurred  to 
her  that  she  could  get  that  hundred  dollars  by  sell 
ing  her  clothes,  she  had,  for  a  few  minutes, » felt 
pretty  sick.  She'd  seen  herself  lugging  a  great 
bundle  from  one  second-hand  store  to  another,  bat 
tered — discouraged.  She  had  wept  a  few  tears, 
there  in  the  street-car,  of  pure  self-pity,  and  then 
had  dried  them  with  a  sudden  flame  of  self-con 
tempt.  Why  shouldn't  she  play  the  game  as  well 
as  she  could,  instead  of  as  badly?  If  any  bullying 
was  to  be  done,  why  not  do  it  herself? 

The  entertainment  of  that  idea  began  an  epoch 
with  Celia — really  changed  the  texture  of  life  for 
her.  She  had  sat  down  at*  the  telephone  as  soon 
as  she  reached  the  house,  called  up,  out  of  the  clas 
sified  directory,  a  dealer  who  advertised  a  most  lib 
eral  disposition  toward  the  purchase  of  used  gowns, 
and  told  him  curtly  that  if  he  cared  to  come  to  her 
97 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

house  before  eight  o'clock  to-morrow  morning,  she 
would  do  business  with  him.  She  was  very  busy 
and  would  be  engaged  later. 

There  had  been  an  enormous  satisfaction  in  feel 
ing  that  she  had  got  just  the  right  intimidating 
ring  into  her  voice.  There  had  even  been  a  satis 
faction  in  recognizing  that  the  man  at  the  other 
telephone  was  playing  the  same  game — didn't  know 
whether  he  could  come  or  not ;  doubted  whether  the 
things  she  had  to  show  him  would  be  worth  the 
trouble.  The  ring  at  the  bell  at  a  quarter  to  eight 
this  morning  meant  that  she'd  won  this  first  skir 
mish.  She'd  played  the  game  better  than  he  had. 

Now,  as  she  waited,  she  was  keen  to  follow  up 
this  victory.  A  feeling  she  did  not  even  note  the 
absence  of  was  shame — humiliation.  She  didn't 
a  bit  mind  letting  Marie  know  the  nature  of  the 
transaction,  and  was  quite  indifferent  as  to  what 
the  maid  might  think,  or  whom  she  might  confide 
her  speculations  about  it  to.  It  was  the  sort  of 
secret  she'd  have  guarded  with  her  life  a  week  ago. 

You  see  money — the  need  of  money — had  always 
98 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

been  the  skeleton  in  the  Frenches'  closet.  The  as 
sumption  current  in  that  family  from  the  time  of 
Celia's  earliest  memories  had  been  that  all  people — 
all  people  of  the  sort  one  met — were  providentially 
provided  with  ample  incomes.  Any  fact  which 
threatened  to  give  the  lie  to  this  presumption  was 
ipso  facto  scandalous  —  unmentionable  —  indecent. 
And  while,  of  course,  there  were  other  topics  simi 
larly  tabooed,  this  was  the  only  one  of  them  that 
did  not  easily  acquiesce  in  being  ignored. 

The  Frenches  were  always  managing,  doing 
without,  stretching  the  not  very  elastic  band  of 
their  income  to  make  the  ends  of  it  meet  around 
their  necessities,  and  they  had  developed,  not  only 
for  use  before  the  world,  but  even  in  the  intimacies 
of  their  domestic  circle,  a  whole  vocabulary  of 
euphemistic  paraphrase  and  circumlocution.  You 
can  make  any  subject  indecent  by  avoiding  it  like 
that. 

A  year  of  married  life  with  Alfred  Blair  had 
reduced  Celia's  sensitiveness  to  the  topic,  but  had 
not  changed  her  ideas  about  it.  It  had  still  seemed 
99 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

to  her,  up  to  the  night  of  that  disastrous  dinner, 
a  little  indelicate  to  ask  the  price  of  anything  she 
meant  to  buy.  Or,  if  not  that,  at  least  to  let  it 
appear  that  price  was  the  determining  factor 
whether  she  bought  it  or  not.  It  still  seemed  intol 
erable  to  her  to  try  to  drive  a  bargain — get  any 
thing  cheaper  than  the  price  it  was  offered  at.  The 
mere  thought  of  trying  to  sell  anything  of  her  own 
made  her  shiver.  It  always  made  her  blue  when 
women  book  agents  came  to  the  house  and  began 
reeling  off  the  merits  of  some  set  of  volumes,  Moun 
tain  Peaks  of  Literature,  and  so  on,  that  they 
wanted  her  to  subscribe  to.  She  used  to  wonder, 
in  a  kind  of  nightmare,  what  she'd  do  if  she  were 
ever  thrust  into  a  situation  where  that  was  the  only 
means  open  to  her  for  keeping  herself  alive.  And 
she  decided,  quite  seriously,  that  if  it  ever  came  to 
that  she'd  kill  herself  with  morphine  or  chloral 
instead. 

But   a   gyroscope,   if   its   gyrations   are   rapid 
enough,  will  do  unexpected  and  surprising  things. 
100 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

It  is  capable  even  of  driving  a  hard  bargain  with 
the  law  of  gravity.  If  you  will  assume  a  living, 
highly  conscious,  self -critical  gyroscope,  which  had 
never  really  revolved  at  all,  had  always  leaned  up 
in  a  corner  for  support,  not  fancying  the  notion 
of  tumbling  over  and  scratching  itself,  and  then 
will  imagine  this  gyroscope,  through  no  volition  of 
its  own,  suddenly  set  whirling  at  ten  thousand  rev- 
olutions  a  minute,  you  will  get  a  pretty  good  notion 
of  the  new  Celia. 

She'd  have  said,  if  questioned,  that  the  force 
which  had  speeded  her  up  and  transformed  her  into 
so  new  and  astonishing  a  person  was  her  furious 
anger  with  her  husband — a  purely  retaliatory  de 
sire  to  demonstrate  to  him  how  injurious  and  un 
founded  his  opinion  of  her  had  been. 

But  she  hadn't  time  to  concern  herself  much  with 
whys  and  wherefores.  It  wasn't  with  any  conscious 
reference  to  Alfred  at  all  that  she  braced  herself 
for  the  arrival  of  the  second-hand  clothes  man  and 
prepared  to  get  as  much  of  his  money  as  she  could 
for  what  she  had  to  sell  him. 
101 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

She  sipped  her  coffee  daintily,  and  told  Marie 
what  things  to  bring  out  from  the  closet. 

Her  first  glance  at  her  opponent  gave  her  the 
mistaken  idea  that  it  was  going  to  be  easy.  He 
wasn't  much  to  look  at;  in  most  respects,  a  dis 
tinctly  inferior  specimen.  His  manner,  in  the  shock 
of  their  first  encounter,  was  weak  and  servile.  Even 
his  oily  black  hair  had  a  meek  look,  and  the  un 
healthy  pallor  of  his  face  accentuated  it. 

But  when  Marie  had  brought  out,  one  after  an 
other,  all  the  pretty  frocks  the  closet  contained — 
evening  gowns,  house  dresses,  a  smart  little  after 
noon  suit,  and  her  two  opera  cloaks — and  he,  after 
an  appraising  glance  at  each,  and  the  notation  of 
a  figure  on  a  greasy  bit  of  paper  with  the  well- 
licked  stub  of  a  pencil,  offered  her,  with  a  quite 
coolly  indifferent  air  of  utter  finality,  thirty-two 
dollars  and  seventy-five  cents  for  the  lot,  the  blow 
almost  finished  her.  She  felt  a  lump  coming  in 
her  throat.  For  a  sickening  moment  she  actually 
believed  that  that  was  all  the  things  were  worth. 
Even  after  her  reason  had  come  to  the  rescue  she 
102 


THE    NEW   WORLD 

went  on  believing,  for  another  minute,  that  that 
was  all  he  thought  they  were  worth  and  the  utmost 
that  he  would  ever  pay. 

But  anger — one  of  the  best  and  most  necessary 
of  all  our  passions,  never  forget  that — came  to  the 
rescue.  That  servile,  oily  little  rat  standing  there, 
pawing  over  her  pretty  clothes,  had  meant  her  to 
feel  sick  like  that.  He  had  shot  her  a  look  out  of 
his  bright  beady  little  eyes  and  no  doubt  noted  the 
effect  of  the  blow,  and  was  gloating  now,  inside, 
over  the  prospect  of  getting  those  lovely  clothes 
for  so  near  nothing. 

Her  finely  penciled  eyebrows  flattened,  and  her 
blue  eyes  darkened  beneath  them. 

"Show  him  the  way  out,  Marie,"  she  commanded 
crisply.  "I  have  too  much  to  do  this  morning  to 
waste  time  listening  to  vulgar  jokes." 

The  man  began  protesting  volubly,  but  Celia  cut 
him  short. 

"You  don't  speak  English  very  well,"  she  ob 
served.  "Perhaps  you  didn't  say  what  you  meant. 
If  you  meant  a  hundred  and  thirty-two  dollars  and 
103 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

seventy-five  cents,  you  may  stay" — she  glanced 
over  at  her  boudoir-clock — "fifteen  minutes  and 
we'll  talk  about  it.  I  can't  give  you  any  more  time 
than  that." 

His  eyes  rolled  in  his  head.  He  appealed  to  the 
high  gods.  The  lady  was  beside  herself — lunatic. 
These  were  not  the  expressions  he  used. 

"I'm  not  crazy  at  all,"  said  Celia  warmly.  "I'm 
extremely  annoyed  at  having  to  listen,  when  I'm 
busy,  to  childish  nonsense.  I  know  what  those 
clothes  are  worth,  and  so  do  you,  and  unless  you're 
willing  to  pay  at  least  half  that  much  I  simply 
won't  bother  with  you." 

He  came  up,  with  a  wrench,  to  fifty;  with  a 
groan,  to  seventy-five — to  eighty.  He  looked  the 
clothes  all  over  again,  minutely,  and  delivered  an 
impressive  ultimatum  —  eighty-two  dollars  and 
twenty  cents. 

Celia  got  up  and  went  over  to  her  dressing-table ; 

sat  down  in  front  of  it  with  her  back  to  him,  took 

an  unimportant  little  gold  pin  out  of  her  negligee, 

and,  holding  it  between  her  lips,  as  though  she  had 

104 


already  begun  the  operation  of  dressing  for  the 
street,  said: 

"Take  him  away,  Marie." 

It  was  an  admirable  bit  of  stage-management, 
and  it  worked. 

"All  right,"  the  man  said.  "I'll  give  you  a  hun 
dred  for  the  lot." 

Celia  took  her  pin  out  of  her  mouth. 

Now  you  are  to  note  this.  A  hundred  dollars  was 
what  she  had  to  have.  She  had  won — barely  won 
— her  victory.  She  didn't  need  any  more.  But 
the  thrill  of  the  game  had  got  into  her  blood.  For 
the  game's  own  sake,  and  for  nothing  else  in  the 
world,  she  said: 

"You  can  have  them  for  a  hundred  and  twenty- 
five." 

She  got,  eventually,  one  hundred  and  eighteen 
dollars.  And  the  satisfaction  she  took  in  the  su 
perfluous  eighteen,  counted  painfully  out,  in  fright 
fully  shabby  one-  and  two-dollar  bills,  was,  it  is 
the  unexaggerated  truth,  one  of  the  very  keenest 
pleasures  she  had  ever  enjoyed, 
105 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

Well,  by  then  it  was  half  past  eight,  and  it  was 
Friday  morning.  By  six  o'clock  Saturday  night, 
if  Alfred  were  to  be  crushed  in  a  convincing  and 
finished  manner,  she  must  have  his  new  home  ready 
for  him,  furnished — settled — dinner  cooking  on  the 
stove.  She  had  the  flat.  She  had  the  hundred  and 
eighteen  dollars,  and  she  had  the  better  part  of 
two  days. 

In  the  buoyant  mood  of  her  departure  from  the 
house,  fifteen  minutes  or  so  after  that  of  the  cha 
stened  clothing  dealer,  the  allowance,  in  respect 
both  of  time  and  money,  seemed  ample. 

The  place  wouldn't  need  much  furniture — a  table 
and  three  or  four  chairs,  a  bed,  kitchen  things.  It 
occurred  to  her,  as  she  rode  in  on  the  train,  that 
it  wouldn't  do  to  allow  her  possession  of  a  large 
sum  like  a  hundred  and  eighteen  dollars  to  lead  her 
to  luxurious  extremes  in  her  purchases.  The  place 
must  look  Spartan,  or  half  the  moral  effect  would 
be  lost.  If  she  could  tuck  away  thirty  or  forty 
dollars  in — she  smiled  over  this — a  stocking  or  a 
teapot,  it  would  be  all  the  better, 
106 


THE    NEW   WORLD 

She  wouldn't  waste  time  over  it,  either.  She'd 
go  to  one  of  the  big  department  stores  on  the  cheap 
side  of  State  Street,  march  through  her  purchases 
without  any  shilly-shally  about  making  up  her 
mind,  then  go  out  to  the  flat  and  assist  the  cleaner 
whom  Larry  Doyle  had,  presumably,  put  to  work. 
This  would  leave  Saturday  free  for  putting  things 
in  place  and  getting  settled. 

This  program  determined  upon,  she  settled  her 
self  in  the  train  to  the  contemplation  of  her  living- 
room  as  she  wanted  it  to  look. 

The  first  thing  she  saw  was  a  big  rag  rug.  They 
looked  homely,  and  were  really  rather  smart.  A 
bright  blue  would  go  well  with  the  smoky  gray  of 
the  walls,  she  thought.  It  would  be  better,  per 
haps,  not  to  go  to  the  wrong  side  of  State  Street 
for  that.  They  kept  them,  she  knew,  in  all  the  big 
stores  on  her  own  side  of  that  thoroughfare.  And 
then  two  comfortable,  but  unpretentious,  chairs — 
a  big  one  for  Fred  and  a  smaller  one  for  herself, 
one  on  each  side  of  the  stove.  And  a  plain  old- 
fashioned  table,  with  leaves  that  folded  down. 
107 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

She  must,  at  this  point,  have  slipped  off  into  a 
day-dream,  since,  with  her  waking  mind,  she  knew 
better  than  to  suppose  she  could  accomplish  an  old- 
fashioned  high-boy  and  a  New  England  pre-Revo- 
^utionary  side-table  with  her  hundred  and  eighteen 
dollars. 

They  went  agreeably  into  the  picture,  though, 
and  she  went  on  adding  to  it  with  growing  pleas 
ure,  until  she  saw  herself,  not  in  her  own  small 
chair,  but  on  the  arm  of  Alfred's  big  one,  her  own 
arm  tucked  cozily  round  his  neck,  his  nice,  still 
thick,  just  a  little  bit  wavy  and  altogether  adorable 
hair  where  she  could  comfortably  put  her  cheek 
down  on  it. 

At  this  point,  properly  scandalized  with  herself 
for  such  even  imagined  inconstancy  to  her  fixed 
determination,  she  shook  herself  awake  again,  and 
reverted  to  more  practical  considerations.  She'd 
have  the  blue  rug,  though. 

She  went  straight  to  Shield's  and  bought  it  for 
twenty-four  dollars.  Really  for  six,  you  see,  be 
cause  she  still  had  ninety-four  left  out  of  her  hun- 
108 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

dred.  Then,  with  the  reflection  that  things  here, 
after  all,  cost  no  more  than  the  same  things  would 
across  the  street,  and  that  she  would  save  time, 
precious  time,  too,  by  not  adventuring  in  unfamiliar 
ways,  she  went  up  to  the  household  utilities  depart 
ment,  intent  on  furnishing  her  kitchen. 

She  felt  very  virtuously  practical  over  beginning 
with  the  kitchen,  instead  of  leaving  it  to  the  last. 

"I  want,"  she  said  to  the  young  man  who  came 
up,  courteously  concerned  to  know  wherein  he  could 
serve  her,  "I  want  to  get  everything  one  needs  for 
a  kitchen — a  little  kitchen,  for  only  two  people." 

She  caught  her  breath  there,  and  turned  away 
with  a  blush  and  a  blink.  The  thing  sounded  so 
absurdly  sentimental  and  honeymoonish — so  ironi 
cally  at  variance  with  the  grim  reality — the  total 
smash — the  totally  hopeless  smash  that  had  over 
taken  her  and  Alfred.  As  she  went  on,  her  voice 
had  the  cold  ring  of  disillusioned  practicality. 

"I  want  to  get  it  all  as  cheaply  as  possible,"  she 
said. 

This  injunction  didn't  discourage  the  young  man 
109 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

at  all.  What  spoke  louder  than  words  to  him  was 
the  cut  of  her  skirt,  the  look  of  her  hat,  the  condi 
tion  of  her  gloves.  Indeed,  the  very  quality  of  the 
voice  that  pronounced  the  words. 

He  remarked  easily  that  cheapness  was  a  desid 
eratum,  of  course,  but  that  cheap  things  were  not 
really  cheap.  This  was  to  say,  that  you  got  more 
service  for  your  money,  which  was  the  real  test, 
of  course,  by  not  being  too  sparing  about  your 
initial  outlay. 

"We'll  begin  with  refrigerators,"  he  said. 
"That's  one  of  the  most  important  things,  really." 

Celia  started  slightly.  She'd  forgotten  about  a 
refrigerator.  Their  house  had  had  one  built  in. 
But  of  course  they'd  have  to  have  one. 

She  spent  an  agreeable  quarter  of  an  hour  among 
the  refrigerators,  and  at  last  tentatively  agreed 
upon  one.  Then  they  moved  over  to  the  kitchen 
cabinets. 

At  this  point  a  cloud,  the  size  of  a  man's  hand, 
appeared  on  Celia's  horizon. 

The  young  man — he  was  a  very  tactful  young 
110 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

man — apparently  became  aware  of  it.  Gently,  but 
irresistibly,  he  convinced  her  that  such  a  cabinet  was 
indispensable.  The  saving  it  effected  in  such  staples 
as  sugar,  flour,  coffee,  and  so  on,  by  keeping  them 
in  properly  devised  air-tight  containers,  was  enor 
mous — incalculable.  Here  was  a  charming  little 
affair,  not  unnecessarily  elaborate,  done  in  a  mod 
est  gray  enamel.  Not  so  showy  as  white,  but  more 
practical.  Being  constructed  entirely  of  steel,  it 
was  impervious  to  vermin  and  easily  kept  in  per 
fectly  sanitary  condition.  He  couldn't  conscien 
tiously  recommend  anything  inferior. 

It,  tentatively  too,  went  down  on  the  list. 

But  the  cloud  was  getting  biggar.  The  young 
man,  aware  of  this  perhaps,  relaxed  his  severity 
in  the  matter  of  fireless  cookers.  There  was  really 
no  need  of  going  to  great  expense  here.  This  one 
at  sixteen  dollars  was  as  good  as  one  really  needed. 
An  exceptional  value  this  week — a  special.  Had 
been  twenty,  and  would  be  again. 

When  it  came  to  utensils,  though,  the  young 
man  was  adamant.    There  was  really  only  one  ma- 
111 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

terial  for  pots,  pans,  skillets,  kettles  and  so  on. 
This  was  cast  aluminum.  Not  the  cheap  stamped 
stuff.  The  solid  article.  The  finest,  the  most  ex 
pensive  enamel  in  th'e  world  would  crack  and  flake, 
if  it  were  allowed  to  burn — and  such  accidents 
would  happen  in  spite  of  the  housewife's  most  rig 
orous  attention. 

He  led  her  up,  unresisting — dazed  a  little,  if  he'd 
known  the  truth — to  the  sumptuous  silvery  array: 
coffee-pots,  tea-kettles,  stew-pans  of  assorted  sizes, 
frying-pans,  griddles. 

"Now,  I'd  suggest — "  he  said  capably,  and  be 
gan  making  a  list. 

"Speaking  of  fireless  cookers,"  said  Celia  pres 
ently,  in  the  midst  of  this — and  the  troubled  quality 
of  her  voice  distracted  him  from  the  labor  he  was 
proceeding  with,  obviously  con  amore — "speaking 
of  fireless  cookers,  how  much  does  a  stove  cost — a 
gas  stove?" 

"We  don't  carry  them,"  he  said,  "though  we 
could  get  you  one,  of  course.  But  you  could  get 
a  pretty  good  one,  I  should  say,  for  thirty-five  or 
forty  dollars." 

112 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

"And  how  much,"  she  asked,  "are  the  things  you 
have  already  put  down  on  that  list?  Not  these 
cooking  dishes — the  others?" 

The  refrigerator,  the  fireless  cooker  and  the 
kitchen  cabinet,  it  seemed,  came  to  eighty-four  dol 
lars  and  twenty-five  cents. 

Celia  turned  away  from  him,  bit  her  lip  hard, 
and  clenched  her  hands  until  the  fingers  in  her  neat 
gloves  felt  numb.  For  a  matter  of  twenty  seconds 
she  experienced  violently  the  sensation  one  has  when 
an  elevator  starts  going  down  too  fast. 

Here's  where  the  difference  came  in.  The  old 
Celia  would  have  managed  a  tolerably  indifferent 
nod  and  a  phrase  about  coming  back  a  little  later, 
or  looking  a  little  farther,  together  with,  perhaps, 
a  glance  at  her  watch  to  account  for  the  suddenness 
of  her  departure.  And  she'd  have  gone  away — 
sick — humiliated. 

The  new  Celia,  after  just  that  twenty  seconds 
for  getting  control  of  the  elevator,  turned  back  to 
the  young  man,  and  with  a  candidly  rueful  smile 
met  his  eye. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry  to  have  wasted  your  time," 
113 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

she  said,  "but  the  sort  of  things  we've  been  looking 
at  are  simply  out  of  the  question.  You  see,  I've 
only  got  a  hundred  dollars — ninety-four  dollars, 
that  is,  to  furnish  the  whole  flat.  It's  just  a  little 
three-room  place  out  on  the  West  Side.  I  suppose 
it  can  be  done  somehow.  It's  going  to  be.  But 
not  with  things  I  could  buy  here !" 

Are  you  waiting  to  be  told  that  on  hearing  this 
avowal  the  young  man  looked  superior  and  annoyed 
and  said  something  disagreeable  about  our  house 
of  course  not  handling  that  class  of  goocls?  If  so, 
you  will  wait  in  vain.  But  I  doubt  if  you  even 
expected  that.  Certainly  not  if  you  have  any  ade 
quate  conceptiori  of  how  Celia  looked  and  how  her 
voice  sounded  when  she  said  it;  with  heightened 
color  and  bright  eyes,  wide  with  a  look  of  adventure 
in  them  like  a  child's ;  or  of  the  hint  of  breathless- 
ness  about  her  speech,  revealing  how  much  she  had 
surprised  herself  by  giving  away  this  confidence. 

What  the  young  man  did  was  to  blush  to  the 
hair,  smile  rather  idiotically,  he  decided  afterward, 
and  experience  a  momentary  twinge  of  the  liveliest 
114 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

envy  of  the  unknown  man  who  was  going  to  share 
the  little  three-room  apartment  and  its  ninety-four- 
dollar  furnishings  with  her. 

"I'll  tell  you  something,"  he  said  very  unofficially 
— confidentially  almost.  In  fact,  he  had  ceased  al 
together  to  be  the  perfect  salesman,  and  had  become 
instead  a  man  and  a  brother.  "I  never  can  get 
my  mother  to  buy  any  of  her  kitchen  things  up 
here.  She  gets  them  all — pots  and  pans  and  such, 
you  know,  at  the  five-  and  ten-cent  store.  She  says 
the  things  wear  out,  of  course,  but  that  when  they 
do  you  can  always  afford  to  buy  new  ones  because 
you  paid  so  little  in  the  first  place." 

"Why,  that's  wonderful,"  said  Celia.  "I  never 
thought  of  that.  I'm  very,  very  much  obliged." 

She  felt  like  shaking  hands  with  him,  and  so, 
indeed,  did  he  with  her.  But  good  manners  re 
strained  them  both. 

When  she  turned  away,  though,  he  fell  in  beside 
her  and  strolled  along  in  the  direction  of  the  ele 
vators.  It  seemed  he  had  something  more  to  say. 

"About  stoves  now — " 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

Celia  stopped  short  and  faced  him  again.     You 

certainly  couldn't  get  a  stove  at  the  ten-cent  store. 
* 

"Of  course,  if  you're  going  to  serve  elaborate 
meals,  or  do  a  lot  of  baking,  you  need  a  big  stove 
with  a,  couple  of  ovens  and  a  plate  warmer  and 
all  the  rest.  But  if  you  aren't,  why  don't  you 
just  get  a  flat  stove  without  any  oven — the  kind 
that  stands  on  a  table — or  a  box?  You  could  buy 
that  kind  for  three  or  four  dollars." 

Celia  drew  in  a  long  breath.  "You  simply 
haven't  any  idea  how  kind  you've  been,"  she  said. 
" You've  just — saved  the  situation." 

And,  after  he'd  stammered,  "Not  at  all,"  and  said 
how  glad  he  was,  she  went  on : 

"And  if  I  save  all  that,  I  suppose  I  could  buy 
a  really  good  refrigerator.  Here,  you  know." 

The  young  man  blushed  again.  What  he'd  done 
already  was  bad  enough,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  head  of  the  department.  But  what  was  com 
ing  next  was  rank  treason,  nothing  less.  No  won 
der  he  hung  fire  for  a  second.  But  it  got  blurted 
out  at  last. 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

"I  tell  you  what  I'd  do,"  he  said.  "You  know 
these  big  storage  warehouses  ?  There  are  some  out 
on  the  West  Side.  Well,  they're  always  selling 
things  that  have  been  stored  and  not  paid  for,  you 
know — all  kinds  of  household  things.  You  could 
probably  get  a  really  good  refrigerator — as  good 
as  you'd  want,  for  eight  or  nine  dollars." 

This  time  Celia  did  shake  hands,  and  blurted 
out  a  secret  at  the  same  time. 

"If  ever  I  get  rich  again,"  she  said,  "I'll  come  up 
here  and  buy  everything  in  sight." 

She  left  an  excellent  salesman  completely  demor 
alized  for  the  day. 

As  for  Celia,  she  went  her  way  to  her  flat  to  see 
how  the  cleaning  was  coming  on,  and  then  to  Larry 
Doyle's  lunch  room  to  find  out  from  him  where  the 
best  storage  warehouse  for  buying  second-hand 
furniture  was,  buoyant  with — well,  no,  it  wouldn't 
be  fair  to  her  numerous  and  conscientious  moral 
preceptors  to  call  it  a  new  discovery.  They  must 
have  told  her  all  about  nettle  grasping.  Very  likely 
some  one  of  them  had  told  her  about  gyroscopes, 
117 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

too — perhaps  even  had  demonstrated  that  if  one 
were  rotating  vigorously  enough  upon  its  proper 
axis,  it  would  decline  to  topple  over  at  the  first 
push.  They  had  expatiated,  too,  I  am  sure,  on 
the  importance  of  having  an  aim  in  life,  and  pursu 
ing  it  energetically,  and  promised  her  ample  re 
wards  in  the  consciousness  of  duty  well  done. 

But  Celia,  hot  on  the  trail  of  a  seven-dollar  re 
frigerator  and  a  three-dollar  stove,  was  indulging 
in  none  of  these  smug  generalities.  All  she  was 
aware  of  was  that  life  had  suddenly  become  a  very 
eager,  thrilling,  glowing  sort  of  business,  and  that 
she  was  running  it  herself,  making  it  happen  dif 
ferently  from  the  way  it  had  set  out  to  happen. 
She  had  made  it  happen  differently  to  other  people. 
She  even  made  it  happen  differently  to  herself. 

That  man  who  bought  her  clothes  this  morning 
— he  hadn't  meant  to  pay  her  a  hundred  and  eight 
een  dollars  for  them.  He  hadn't  meant  to  pay  half 
of  that.  But  she,  Celia,  all  by  herself,  had  made 
him  do  it.  And  then,  up  there  at  Shield's,  with 
that  thoroughly  correct  and  highly  superior  young 
118 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

salesman.  She'd  gone  on  with  him  for  three-quar 
ters  of  an  hour,  feeling  wretched  and  ashamed,  and 
a  little  hopeless,  because  she  knew,  without  acknowl 
edging  it  to  herself,  that  she  couldn't  afford  to  buy 
the  things  he  was  showing  to  her.  But  when,  at 
last,  for  a  penance  really,  because  she  was  ashamed 
of  herself  for  being  ashamed,  she'd  made  herself, 
who  hadn't  meant  to  in  the  least,  tell  him  the  actual 
literal  truth  in  dollars  and  cents,  she  had  found 
herself  perfectly  at  ease  at  once. 

What  hurt,  she  reflected,  wasn't  having  people 
know  things  about  you.  It  was  having  them  sus 
pect  things  that  you  were  trying  to  hide.  Well, 
that  was  easy.  She  need  never  be  ashamed  of  any 
thing  again. 

With  a  little  leisure  for  reflection  she  might  have 
made  some  further  discoveries  just  as  surprising, 
or  even  more  so.  But  you  won't  need  to  be  told  that 
she  had  none.  She  had  two  tasks  on  her  hands: 
one  to  get  the  new  flat  ready  for  herself  and  Fred, 
the  other  to  get  their  house  ready  for  the  Colliers. 
Either  one  of  them  was  enough  to  fill  to  bursting 
119 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

the  time  at  her  disposal,  and  that  she  actually  ac 
complished  both  may  be  taken  as  a  triumphant  dem 
onstration  that  a  body  can  occupy  two  different 
spaces  at  the  same  time. 

Part  of  the  credit  for  this  must  go  to  Larry 
Doyle,  for  it  was  he  who  organized  Celia's  activi 
ties,  showed  her  the  importance  of  doing  certain 
things  first.  It  was  nearly  eleven  o'clock  Friday 
morning  when  she  confronted  him  across  his  lunch 
eon  bar,  and  she  plunged  into  the  midst  of  things 
without  the  waste  of  a  minute. 

"It  isn't  any  friends  of  mine  that  I  took  the  place 
for,"  she  began.  "It's  my  husband  and  me.  He's 
lost  all  his  money,  and  he's  got  a  job  at  twenty -two 
dollars  and  a  half  a  week.  I  told  him  he  could  leave 
the  flat  to  me  and  that  I'd  have  it  ready  to  live 
in  to-morrow  when  he  comes  home  from  work.  I'll 
bring  sheets  and  blankets  and  towels  and  table  linen 
from  home.  Those  things  don't  go  with  a  fur 
nished  house,  do  they?  And  I've  got  a  silly  blue 
rug  that  I  paid  twenty-four  dollars  for  for  the 
big  room,  and  I've  got  ninety-four  dollars  to  buy 
120 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

everything  else  with.  Oh,  six  of  it  goes  for  your 
stove.  That  leaves  eighty-eight.  So  I  want  you  to 
tell  me  where  there's  a  storage  warehouse,  or  a  sec 
ond-hand  shop,  where  I  can  get  everything  cheap." 

It's  no  wonder  she  rather  took  Larry  Doyle's 
breath,  with  her  bright  cheeks — the  March  wind 
was  sharp  this  morning — and  her  eager  voice,  and 
her  half-scared  adventurous  way  of  making  friends 
with  him. 

While  he  was  making  up  his  mind  what  to  say 
first,  she  ran  on: 

"It  will  be  possible,  won't  it — to  have  everything 
ready  for  him,  running,  you  know,  by  six  o'clock 
to-morrow  night  ?  Oh,  but  it's  got  to  be !" 

"Sure,  it's  possible,"  he  said.  "But  you  don't 
want  to  be  bothering  with  your  second-hand  furni 
ture  yet  a  while.  Go  straight  to  the  gas  office  now 
— it's  not  far — and  get  your  stove  and  tell  them 
you  must  have  it  connected  up  with  a  meter  to-day. 
To-morrow's  a  half-day,  being  Saturday,  and  you 
won't  get  a  hand's  turn  of  work  out  of  those  boys. 
So,  if  you  don't  want  to  be  left  till  Monday — " 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

"I  see,"  she  broke  in,  champing  to  be  off.  "Tell 
me  where  it  is." 

He  did,  and  added  the  warning  that  they'd  very 
likely  tell  her,  to  begin  with,  that  it  was  impossible 
for  them  to  put  the  job  through  this  week. 

"But  I'm  thinking,"  he  added,  "that  you'll  know 
what  to  say  to  them  better  than  I  could  tell  you." 

She  nodded  and  smiled,  partly  in  anticipation, 
partly  in  amused  remembrance  of  a  Celia  who  had 
ceased  to  exist  some  time  during  the  past  week,  who 
had  always  said,  with  a  touch  of  unconscious  pride, 
that  she  couldn't  beg  for  things. 

"On  your  way  back  from  there,"  Larry  called 
after  her,  "stop  in  at  the  coal  office  and  have  them 
send  up  a  hundred-pound  sack  of  range  for  your 
stove.  It  won't  do  for  you  to  be  sitting  around  in 
those  cold  rooms." 

She  might  have  tossed  that  caution  off  with  airy 
impatience  but  for  a  phrase  the  Irishman  sent  after 
her. 

"There  are  them  that  can  afford  to  be  sick,"  he 
said,  "and  there  are  them  that  can't." 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

She  was  inclined  to  disrelish  that  idea  as  she 
walked  away  with  it — the  notion  that  her  health 
was  an  asset  her  husband  was  entitled  to  count 
upon.  But  she  adopted  it  instantly,  and  presently 
found  a  certain  satisfaction  in  that  point  of  view, 
partly,  perhaps,  because  she  felt  that  Alfred's  chiv- 
alrousness  would  be  shocked  by  it. 

She  found  them,  at  the  gas  office,  quite  as  diffi 
cult  as  she  had  been  warned  they  would  be,  and 
it  took  a  half -hour's  intensive  bombardment  with 
all  her  feminine  artillery  to  reduce  the  man  she 
finally  got  herself  taken  to  to  a  weakly  acquiescent 
state,  in  which  the  promise  she  wanted  could  be 
wrung  out  of  him.  Then  she  paid  for  her  stove — 
a  three-burner  affair — and  departed  in  triumph. 

Her  activities  from  then  on  were  too  complex 
and  multifarious  to  be  followed  in  detail.  She 
stalked  elusive  bargains  from  one  likely  lair  to  an 
other,  slowly,  it  seemed  to  her,  but  really  with  re 
markable  expedition,  accumulating  the  articles  she 
needed. 

She  had  her  ups  and  downs.     There  were  ex- 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

ultant  moments,  just  after  finding  something  that 
was  exactly  what  she  wanted,  and  buying  it  for  less 
than  she  had  believed  possible,  when  she  thought 
she  was  going  to  have  more  money  than  she  needed 
and  revived  the  notion  of  a  nest-egg  hoard  in  a 
stocking.  There  were  moments  of  despair  when 
some  necessity  she  had  completely  overlooked  reared 
its  head  and  stared  at  her. 

She  wound  up  at  the  nearest  ten-cent  store  at 
half  past  four  in  the  afternoon;  purchased — very 
much  at  haphazard,  because  she  was  too  tired  to 
think — a  quantity  of  kitchen  dishes,  and  lugged 
them,  in  two  vast  irregular  bundles,  from  which 
the  strings  were  constantly  threatening  to  slip,  back 
to  the  flat. 

She  experienced  a  very  keen  pleasure  in  finding 
Larry  Doyle  there  making  a  fire  in  the  big  base- 
burner.  Not  only  because  a  fire  was  very  much 
needed,  the  place  being  cold  as  a  stone  and  damp 
into  the  bargain  from  the  cleaning  it  had  got,  but 
because  Larry  was,  by  this  time,  such  a  very  old 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

and  dear  friend,  and  it  warmed  and  rested  one's 
heart  to  see  him. 

He  reported  that  the  gas  stove  had  come  and  that 
the  man  with  the  meter  had  already  come  in  and 
connected  it  up;  probably  a  world's  record  for 
promptness,  he  thought,  and  an  extraordinary 
tribute  to  Celia's  powers  of  persuasion.  Also,  a 
large  rolled-up  package  had  come  from  Shield's 
that  must  be  the  rug  she  had  spoken  of.  Should 
he  open  it? 

He  did,  and  they  spread  it  down  on  the  floor  and 
discussed  its  appearance.  It  would  probably  look 
pretty  funny,  Celia  thought,  along  with  the  junk 
she  had  been  buying  this  afternoon. 

Her  voice  was  flat  with  fatigue,  and  he  com 
mented  upon  it. 

"You'd  better  call  it  a  day,  now,  and  go  home 
to  bed,"  he  advised.  He  must  be  leaving,  himself, 
since  another  busy  hour  of  the  lunch  room  was  com 
ing  on. 

"There  are  two  reasons  why  I  must  stay,"  she 
125 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

said.  "One  of  them  being  that  I  am  too  tired  to 
stir  until  I  have  sat  here  for  a  while."  She  was 
on  the  only  seat  in  the  place,  the  step  leading  up 
to  their  alcove  bedroom.  "And  the  other  that  the 
expressman  who's  bringing  the  things  from  the 
storage  warehouse  will  be  along  in  a  few  minutes, 
and  I've  got  to  be  here  to  let  him  in.  Oh,  he  won't 
be  long,  and  as  soon  as  he  comes  I'll  go." 

Before  he  left  he  pulled  up  a  corner  of  the  rug 
over  the  step  to  make  it  a  little  softer,  and  told  her 
how  to  shut  off  the  stove  for  the  night. 

She  heard  the  door  close  behind  him,  and  almost 
instantly  thereafter,  she  thought,  a  violent  knock 
ing  on  it,  which  seemed,  impossibly,  to  have  been 
going  on  some  time.  Also  the  room  was  now  quite 
dark,  except  as  it  was  lighted  by  the  glow  through 
the  isinglass  door  of  the  stove.  It  was  very  bewil 
dering,  until  she  understood  that  she  must  have 
fallen  asleep,  sitting  on  that  step. 

It  was  then  seven  o'clock ;  a  very  alcoholic  flavor 
about  the  two  men  who  had  brought  her  load  of  fur 
niture  accounting,  perhaps,  for  their  delay  in  ar- 
126 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

riving  with  it ;  and  it  was  a  quarter  to  eight  before 
the  last  article  was  stowed  away  and  Celia  could 
turn  the  key  on  the  place. 

An  even  twelve  hours  ago  she  had  received  the 
second-hand  clothing  dealer  for  the  purpose  of  sell 
ing  him  her  clothes.  It  had  been  a  day  sure  enough. 
An  ampler  day,  not  only  in  the  matter  of  material 
activities,  but  in  its  emotional  content,  than  any 
she  could  remember.  The  people  she'd  encountered 
had  seemed  more  real  and  alive  and  human  than 
those  her  old  paths  had  brought  her  into  casual 
contact  with. 

When  had  any  of  her  conventionally  made  ac 
quaintances  evoked  that  warm  spontaneous  glow  of 
friendliness  from  her  that  she'd  felt  when  she  found 
Larry  Doyle  building  a  fire  in  her  stove,  or  when 
the  salesman  up  at  Shield's  had  told  her  where  his 
mother  bought  her  kitchen  things? 

The  emotions  hadn't  all  been  rosy,  though,  by 
any  means.  There  had  been  an  instant  of  cold  ter 
ror  just  at  the  end  of  the  day,  when,  confronted 
by  that  gin-reeking  expressman,  she  had  read  in 
127 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

his  look  that  she  was  desirable,  and  alone.  She  had 
moved  briskly  over  and  thrown  open  a  window  upon 
the  busy  street,  and  with  that  protection  had  felt 
safe  enough.  But  the  mere  breath  of  that  kind  of 
peril  had  never  blown  upon  her  before.  Oh,  it  had 
been  a  day. 

She  was  so  tired,  as  she  made  her  way  to  the 
corner  drug-store  to  call  up  the  house  and  tell  Fred 
where  she  was  and  that  she  was  on  her  way  home, 
that  the  mere  exertion  of  walking  almost  brought 
tears.  But  even  fatigue  couldn't  lessen  the  trium 
phant  sense  of  achieved  adventure. 

None  of  that,  naturally,  got  over  the  telephone 
to  her  husband,  and  his  own  tone  of  poignant  anxi 
ety — he  had  been  waiting  hours  for  her  to  come 
home  and  indulging  in  all  sorts  of  terrors  about 
her — sounded  merely  querulous  to  her.  He  had 
called  up  her  mother's  house  two  or  three  times, 
but  they  had  no  word  from  her.  Was  that  where 
she  was  now? 

This  supposition,  naturally  again,  annoyed  Celia. 
Why  should  she  be  at  her  mother's  ?  She  told  him, 
128 


without  explanation,  where  she  was,  and  that  she 
was  coming  straight  home  now ;  would  get  in  about 
nine. 

"You  can't  come  home  alone  from  a  place  like 
that  at  this  time  of  night!"  And  then,  quite  ab 
surdly,  he  told  her  to  wait  there  until  he  could  come 
in  and  get  her. 

This,  of  course,  she  flatly  declined  to  do.  A 
street-car  that  would  take  her  to  the  station  ran 
right  past  the  door.  "I  hope  you've  got  your 
things  all  packed  up,"  she  said  by  way  of  a  counter 
attack.  "If  you  haven't,  you'd  better  get  at  it 
now,  because  everything  has  got  to  be  out  of  your 
closet  and  your  bureau  drawers  by  to-morrow  morn 
ing.  You  can  pack  a  trunk  with  what  you'll  want 
to  take  with  you  to  the  flat,  and  put  the  rest  of  the 
stuff  in  another  trunk  that  Ruth  says  we  can  leave 
in  the  attic.  I  shan't  have  a  minute  to  do  it  to 
morrow." 

She  needn't  have  made  that  last  remark,   she 
knew,  and  she  didn't  blame  him  a  bit  for  slamming 
the  hook  down  suddenly,  the  way  he  did,  by  way  of 
129 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

concluding  the  conversation.  Only,  the  ridiculous 
ness  of  the  notion  that,  after  the  things  she'd  been 
doing  to-day,  and  been  through  to-day,  she  should 
finish  up,  like  a  Jane  Austin  heroine,  by  waiting 
an  hour  and  a  half  as  a  concession  to  the  propri 
eties — because  there  was,  of  course,  no  real  danger 
— so  that  her  husband  could  escort  her  home,  net 
tled  her  a  little. 

Their  meeting,  when  she  got  home,  at  half  past 
nine  or  so,  didn't  work  much  better. 

He  flung  the  door  open  for  her  as  she  came  up 
the  steps  and  greeted  her  with  a,  "Wherever  in  the 
world  have  you  been?" 

She  gave  a  limp  little  laugh  and  said,  "Where 
haven't  I  been !  My,  but  I'm  tired !" 

"Celia,"  he  said,  standing  in  front  of  her  to  keep 
her  from  walking  off,  as  she  showed  a  disposition 
to  do,  "we've  got  to  have  a  talk." 

"All  right,"  she  said,  k<but  come  on  out  into  the 
kitchen  and  talk  while  I  eat.     I  had  a  lunch  about 
three  at  Larry  Doyle's,  but  that's  all  since  coffee 
this  morning.    I'm  starved!" 
130 


THE    NEW    WORLD 

Her  manner  both  disconcerted  and  exasperated 
him.  He  had  been  prepared  to  meet  terrible  emo 
tional  stresses — tragedy.  He  felt  pretty  tragic 
himself.  But  nothing  of  that  should  be  allowed 
to  appear.  From  now  on  his  dealings  with  Celia 
should  be  marked  by  gentleness  and  serenity.  And, 
if  she'd  been  the  grief-stricken  bewildered  object 
he'd  got  himself  keyed  up  for,  she  would  have  found 
him  exactly  that.  But,  as  it  was,  he  cried  out: 

"Who  the  deuce  is  Larry  Doyle?  And  where — 
where  have  you  been — all  these  hours?" 

She  frowned,  a  little  puzzled  over  his  violence, 
but  said:  "I've  been  all  over  the  West  Side.  And 
Larry  Doyle  is  a  dear.  Wait  till  you've  seen  him !" 

He  said,  "Celia,  I  can't  do  it — treat  the. thing 
in  that  manner,  I  mean.  Here  we  are  at  the  end 
of  everything,  and  you're  acting  as  if  it  was  plans 
for  a  week-end  visit  to  the  country.  This  is  our 
last  chance  to  decide  anything,  and — and  I  want 
to  talk  about  it  seriously.  You  aren't  so  angry 
with  me  now  as  you  were,  and  I  think  I  can  make 
you  see  that  I  didn't  mean  what  you  thought  the 
131 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

other  night.  At  least,  not  in  that  offensive  way. 
I  want  you  to  consider  going  back  to  your  father 
and  mother.  Not  to  get  rid  of  me,  but  to  wait. 
Oh,  can't  you  sit  down  and  listen !" 

All  the  time  he  talked  she  had  been  eating  away 
steadily,  and  his  last  exclamation  was  provoked  by 
her  getting  up  for  a  raid  on  the  cake-box. 

"I'm  listening,"  she  said,  with  her  mouth  full, 
it  must  be  admitted.  Then,  with  an  effort,  and  a 
little  bit  more  clearly :  "But  it  isn't  any  use,  Fred. 
You  agreed  to  the  flat,  didn't  you?" 

"You  won't  be  able  to  find  one  that  you'd  be 
willing  to  live  in,  for  any  rent  I  can  afford  to  pay. 
You've  no  idea  what  it  would  mean ;  the  things 
you'd  have  to  put  up  with,  the  neighbors  you'd 
have,  the  hardships." 

"I  don't  suppose  I  do  know  them  all,"  she  ad 
mitted,  "but  I've  found  a  flat  and  rented  it  for 
twelve  dollars  a  month.  It's  off  North  Avenue,  right 
near  Humboldt  Park."  She  recited  the  street  and 
number  to  him.  "You'd  better  write  it  down,"  she 
132  ' 


THE    NEW    WORLD  , 

added,  "because  it's  where  you  live.  I've  been  buy 
ing  furniture  all  the  afternoon." 

Then,  at  his  look  of  perfectly  blank  amazement, 
"Why — didn't  you  think  I  meant  anything  I  said 
that  night  ?  What  do  you  think  I've  been  doing  all 
the  afternoon?  Glooming  around  like  the  heroine 
of  East  Lynne?  Do  write  that  address  down, 
Fred,  because  your  dinner — some  sort  of  a  dinner 
— is  going  to  be  ready  there  to-morrow  night,  at 
half  past  six,  and  I  don't  want  you  wandering  all 
over  the  West  Side,  not  knowing  where  you  live." 

She  recited  the  address  once  more,  and  stood 
watching,  while  he,  like  an  automaton,  wrote  it 
down.  Then,  before  he  could  get  his  wits  together 
— and  she  had  plenty  of  time,  for  they  were  very 
thoroughly  scattered — she  added: 

"I'm  simply  so  dead  tired  and  sleepy  I  can  feel 
my  brains  slipping  around  inside  my  head.  I'm 
going  up  to  bed.  Good  night." 


CHAPTER  VI 

WHEN  HE  CAME  HOME 

IT  wasn't  quite  the  real  thing,  this  manner  of 
hers.  There  was  a  dash  of  play-acting  in  it. 
But  she  wasn't  conscious,  to-night — she  was  too 
tired,  poor  child,  to  be  accurately  conscious  of  any 
thing — of  the  motive  that  led  her  to  assume  it.  In 
the  background  of  her  mind,  of  course,  she  knew 
that  she  had  mislaid  her  rage  against  her  husband. 
More  than  that,  had  tossed  it  overboard  long  ago. 
She  knew  that  the  motive,  quite  sincerely  avowed  on 
the  night  of  the  dinner-party — the  desire  to  demon 
strate,  to  his  repentance  and  shame,  how  outra 
geously  he  had  misjudged  her — had  been  wearing 
thinner  and  thinner  every  hour,  and  that  it  would 
collapse  almost  at  the  first  touch.  But  she  didn't 
want  the  collapse  to  happen  until  she  got  him  fairly 
into  their  new  home. 

There  were  a  multitude  of  last  things  to  be  done 
134. 


WHEN    HE    CAME    HOME 

at  the  house,  of  course,  the  next  morning,  and  she 
didn't  get  started  on  them  as  early  as  she  might, 
since  she  slept  fathoms  deep  till  eight  o'clock,  and 
only  by  luck  waked  up  then.  So  it  was  near  noon 
before  she  reached  the  flat.  Six  hours  and  a  little 
more  left,  and  an  amount  to  do  that  might  well 
have  swamped  her  with  dismay. 

A  description  of  how  the  place  looked  would  be 
lugubrious,  and,  since  I  am  sure  you  can  imagine 
it,  unnecessary.  But  Celia  was  not  dismayed,  and 
there  was  a  good  reason  why.  Down  below  the 
mere  surface  of  her  mind,  which  was,  of  course, 
completely  engaged  from  the  moment  of  her  ar 
rival,  she  was  preoccupied  with  what  was  going  to 
happen  at  half  past  six,  and  from  then  on.  Marie 
had  brought  her  a  note  from  Alfred  with  her  break 
fast — he,  of  course,  had  had  to  go  to  town  long  be 
fore  she  waked  up — a  note  which  merely  said  that 
he  would  come  at  the  hour  she  had  given  him.  All 
the  afternoon,  this  one  fact  was  vividly  in  focus. 
She  rehear&ed  the  event  a  score  of  different  ways. 
He'd  be  surprised,  no  doubt,  with  what  he  found, 
135 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

curious  as  to  how  she  had  accomplished  it,  and  he'd 
surely  be  repentant;  especially  after  he'd  found 
out  how  completely  she  had  deprived  his  grievance 
of  any  standing  ground  at  all;  that  she  had  not, 
for  instance,  either  gone  in  debt  for  the  furniture, 
or  used  a  single  bone  of  what  may  be  called  their 
skeleton  of  contention — namely,  the  jewelry — for 
the  purchase  of  it.  Certainly  he  couldn't  object  to 
her  having  sold  her  clothes.  That  was  so  brilliantly 
reasonable  a  thing  to  have  done. 

She  wouldn't,  of  course,  try  to  rub  her  own 
grievance  into  him.  It  wouldn't  be  necessary.  The 
mere  outstanding  facts  of  the  situation  would  cry 
aloud  how  he  had  misjudged  her.  No,  there  must 
be  nothing  tragic  or  aggrieved  about  her  manner; 
nothing  virtuous  or  injured  or  martyrlike.  She 
must  be  good-humored  and  cool.  She  must  act  in 
the  manner  of  one  who  expects  all  she  has  done  to 
be  taken  for  granted — accepted  as  a  matter  of 
course. 

All  this,  until  he  had  acknowledged,  in  some  way 
or  other,  how  wildly  in  error  he  had  been  in  his 
136 


WHEN    HE    CAME    HOME 

opinion  of  her,  and  had,  by  implication  at  least, 
asked  her  forgiveness.    After  that — ? 

Always,  when  she  reached  this  point  in  the 
drama,  she  found  her  hands  getting  shaky,  and  a 
stiffness  coming  into  her  throat,  and  with  a  sort  of 
panicky  haste  she  would  ring  down  the  curtain  and 
begin  another  rehearsal  at  the  point  where  she 
heard  him  coming  up  the  stairs. 

But  all  the  resolution  at  her  command  wasn't 
enough  to  prevent  fancies  and  memories,  especially 
memories,  from  springing  at  her;  little  momentary 
glimpses  of  her  husband,  their  context  often  quite 
forgotten,  just  how  he'd  looked,  or  how  his  voice 
had  sounded  at  one  time  or  another.  And  when 
this  happened,  she'd  go  very  shaky  for  a  minute, 
and  have  to  wipe  her  eyes  on  the  sleeve  of  her  big 
gingham  apron,  in  order  to  see  what  she  was  doing. 

At  two  o'clock,  when  she  went  to  Larry  Doyle's 
for  lunch,  it  seemed  to  her  that  she  had  made  little 
headway.  But  he  came  back  with  her  for  an  hour, 
his  noon  rush  being  over,  and  between  them  they 
accomplished  miracles. 

137 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

There  was  plenty  to  do,  of  course,  even  after 
that.  At  five  o'clock  she  locked  up  the  flat  and  set 
out,  with  her  last  three  dollars,  to  buy  food  for 
their  evening  meal,  and — she  nearly  forgot  this — 
for  over  Sunday. 

She  had  a  surprise  up  her  sleeve  here  for  Alfred. 
She  was,  really,  despite  the  misgiving  she  had  con 
fided  to  Larry  Doyle,  not  a  half-bad  cook.  Years 
ago,  when  that  first  man  she  had  got  engaged  to 
was  in  the  ascendent,  she  had  played,  in  quite  a 
serious  manner,  at  domestic  science,  and  had  really 
discovered  a  latent  talent  for  cooking.  Her  dra 
matic  break-up,  however,  with  the  man  who  had 
inspired  these  labors,  had  swept  her  into  other 
channels,  and  she'd  never  gone  back.  Alfred  sus 
pected  nothing  of  this,  and  it  had  been  part  of  her 
program  to  complete  his  annihilation,  if  possible, 
with  a  pretty  good  dinner.  The  fact  that  she  had 
to  buy  enough  for  five  meals,  with  her  three  dollars, 
gave  her  an  excuse,  which  she  was  rather  glad  of, 
for  giving  up  this  project. 

At  six  o'clock,  with  the  table  set,  the  potatoes 
138 


WHEN    HE    CAME    HOME 

boiling  vigorously  in  their  jackets,  the  slice  of  ham 
ready  to  light  the  fire  under  when  the  moment  ar 
rived,  she  was  seized  with  a  panic  because  there 
appeared  to  be  nothing  to  do  but  wait,  and  she 
simply  knew  she  couldn't — not  without  going  all 
to  pieces.  Already  she  could  feel  the  tears  com 
ing  up  and  a  lump  in  her  throat.  It  would  be  in 
furiating  to  have  everything  spoiled  now,  just  in 
the  hour  of  her  triumph,  by  having  him  find  wait 
ing  for  him,  instead  of  the  good-humored,  self- 
possessed  young  person  she'd  been  counting  on  all 
afternoon,  a  sob-shaken,  semi-liquid,  tear-streaked, 
grimy — 

Well,  anyway,  she  could  wash  her  face.  That 
was  something  to  do.  And,  in  the  bathroom,  she 
scrubbed  away  vigorously  for  five  minutes.  After 
that,  providentially,  she  remembered  that  she  had 
forgotten  to  slice  the  bread,  and  with  hands  that 
strangely  refused  to  take  a  proper  hold  on  any 
thing,  she  managed  to  get  it  done. 

Then  she  decided  that  the  potatoes  had  boiled 
long  enough,  and  began  peeling  them. 
139 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

And  then,  half-way  through  her  second  potato, 
she  heard  a  step  on  the  stairs.  It  wasn't  Alfred. 
It  couldn't  be.  It  wasn't  his  time — not  for  fifteen 
minutes.  But  it  was  he !  Didn't  she  know  his  step  ? 
He  was  coming  up  heavily — slowly,  as  though  he 
was  tired. 

She  dropped  her  knife  and  the  fork  that  empaled 
the  potato,  and  put  her  face  down  in  the  crook  of 
her  arm.  She  was  so  limp  she  was  sure  she  couldn't 
stand  up.  But  when  she  heard  the  door  open  she 
did,  and  from  the  doorway  of  the  kitchen  she  saw 
him  standing  in  the  other. 

She  saw  his  gaze  travel,  dazedly,  with  a  strange, 
unrealizing  wistfulness,  from  one  object  to  another 
about  the  room — from  the  bright  stove  with  its 
glowing  doors,  to  the  big  hollow  easy  chair,  and  the 
little  spring  rocker  with  its  fringe  trimmings  op 
posite  it,  to  the  table  with  the  lamp  in  the  middle, 
and  the  red  checked  table-cloth.  It  was  coming 
around  to  her  now.  But  before  it  reached  her  she 
saw  his  eyes  fill  up  with  tears. 

That  was  the  last  thing  she  saw.  She  heard  him 
140 


WHEN    HE    CAME    HOME 

saying  her  name,  just  as  her  voice  broke  over  his, 
and  then,  somehow,  they  were  in  each  other's  arms. 
"Tighter !"  she  said. 

They  had  their  talk,  to  be  sure,  but  it  wasn't 
until  a  good  deal  later.  You  can  compute  roughly 
how  much  later,  from  the  fact  that  the  potatoes 
were  absolutely  stone  cold,  and  had  to  be  warmed 
up  in  the  frying-pan  before  they  could  begin  their 
supper ;  that  they  ate  at  last,  in  the  inconstant  and 
preoccupied  manner  of  honeymoon  lovers,  and  that 
they  washed  up  the  dishes  in  the  same  way. 

But  after  all  that,  and  after  they  had  rectified, 
temporarily,  Celia's  total  omission  to  provide  cur 
tains  or  shades,  with  a  sheet  pinned  up  over  each 
of  the  two  front  windows,  they  got  down  to  a  bath 
robe  and  bedroom-slipper  basis,  settled  together  in 
the  big  hollow  chair,  and  told  each  other  all  about 
everything;  what  they'd  really  meant  by  things 
they'd  said  and  done  and  omitted  to  do,  and  what 
each  had  thought  the  other  meant,  and  what  a  pair 
of  sillies  they  had  been.  And  Celia  wound  it  up  by 
141 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

narrating,  though  not  just  as  I  have  done  here, 
how  she'd  spent  the  time  since  Thursday  morning. 

At  last,  blissfully  content,  and  a  little  drowsy, 
she  began  asking  him  questions ;  if  he  was  glad  that 
it  had  all  happened  just  as  it  had,  down  to  the  very 
least  particular.  She  was,  she  said.  There  was 
nothing,  not  the  smallest  thing,  that  she  would  want 
changed. 

She  couldn't  get  him  to  go  as  far  as  that. 
"There  were  things  I  said  to  you  that  night,"  he 
insisted,  "and  things  I — I  couldn't  quite  deny  I 
meant,  that  I'd  give  a  good  deal  to  wipe  off  the 
slate." 

"Oh,  but  that,"  she  said,  sitting  up  suddenly,  "is 
the  very  best  part  of  it.  That's  what's  done  it  all, 
don't  you  see?  We  might  have  gone  on  for  years 
and  never — never  really  been  married  at  all,  if  we 
hadn't,  in  our  rage,  turned  in  and  torn  the — the 
husks  off  each  other,  so  that  we  could  see  what  we 
really  were.  You  were  right  about  me,  you  know, 
horribly  right.  That  was  what  made  me  so  furi 
ous.  And  it  was  true  that  you  weren't  the  man  I 


'Tighter !"  she  said 


WHEN    HE    CAME    HOME 

married.  Oh,  but  it's  all  right,  silly,  don't  you  see? 
Because  I'm  not  the  girl  you  married,  either." 

He  protested  at  this.  She  was  the  same  Celia, 
only  now,  for  the  first  time,  he  saw  her  with  open 
eyes. 

But  she,  quite  dispassionately,  stuck  to  her  point. 
"Surely  I  ought  to  know,"  she  insisted,  sitting  up 
straight  and  rubbing  her  sleepy  eyes.  "I  remember 
that  girl  well.  I  remember  how  annoyed  and 
shocked  she  was  when  she  found  the  new  girl — the 
new  me,  you  know — falling  in  love  with  you,  in — 
in  a  new  way  which  she  didn't  think  quite  ladylike. 
And  the  new  one  was  rather  scared  and  easily  im 
posed  upon,  and  she  might  never  have  got  away  at 
all,  if  you  hadn't  come  along — the  new  you,  re 
member;  not  prosperous  and  self-contained,  and — 
don't  mind — noble  at  all,  but  just  raw  and  real  and 
human,  and  fighting  mad,  and  turned  her  loose." 

He  still  wanted  to  laugh  her  out  of  this  fancy, 
but  she  was  very  much  in  earnest  about  it. 

"You  must  believe  it,"  she  insisted.  "And  you 
must  never  forget  it.  You  mustn't  treat  me  like  the 
143 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

old  Celia.  The  old  one  never  liked  to  be  — next  to 
things,  or  people,  but  I  do.  I  love  it."  She  paused 
to  illustrate.  "I've  just  come  alive,  don't  you  see, 
and  found  out  what  a  wonderful  thing  it  is. 
P — please  say  that  you're  new  too,  and  that  this, 
to-night,  is  the  beginning  of  everything." 

"The  beginning  of  everything,"  he  echoed. 

For  the  former  things  were  passed  away. 

So  ends  the  first  chapter  of  this  episode  in  the 
life  of  the  Alfred  Blairs. 


CHAPTER  VII 

INTERLUDE 

"~\  "\  TE  will  sing,"  the  preacher  says,  "the  first 
V  T  and  third  stanza,  omitting  the  second." 

There  are  three  chapters  in  this  fragment  of 
Celia's  and  Alfred's  story;  but  we,  at  the  conclu 
sion  of  the  first,  are  going  to  proceed  directly  to 
the  third.  Blessed  is  the  nation  which  has  no  his 
tory.  And  blessed,  for  the  same  reason,  is  the 
family  which  doesn't  give  the  novelist  a  chance. 

The  three  months  which  followed  Celia's  finding 
and  renting  and  furnishing  of  the  flat  make  up  this 
second  chapter.  To  Alfred  and  Celia  it  remains 
the  outstanding  one,  and  when  they  are  old,  I  fancy 
they'll  still  talk  to  each  other  about  it.  As  they 
see  it  retrospectively,  it  is  their  period  of  pure  ro 
mance — three  golden  honeymoons  strung  on  a  silver 
wire. 

Please  don't  take  me  as  saying  that  I  consider 
145 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

poverty  a  romantic  lark,  or  even  the  perilously  close 
approach  to  poverty  that  is  spelled  by  an  income, 
for  two  people,  of  twenty-two  and  a  half  dollars  a 
week. 

But  the  Blairs  were  not  really  so  poor  as  they 
made  out.  They  had,  for  the  present,  plenty  of 
good  serviceable  clothes;  they  had  in  certain  pros 
pect,  though  they  carefully  avoided  looking  at  it, 
the  income  from  their  house.  And,  too,  down  in  the 
bottom  of  the  mind  of  each,  though  neither  ever  ad 
mitted  it,  was  the  consciousness  that  this  state  of 
things  was  transitory,  and  really  terminable  at  will. 

There  is  no  denying  that  this  consciousness 
changed  the  quality  of  their  adventure  a  little, 
spiced  it  faintly  with  the  flavor  of  make-believe. 
It  was  easier,  for  example,  to  make  a  joke  of  it, 
when  a  mistake  in  the  budget  reduced  them,  for 
four  whole  days,  to  a  famine  ration;  or  to  smile, 
as  they  stood  together  outside  an  enticing  motion- 
picture  theater  around  on  North  Avenue,  and  had, 
forlornly,  to  admit  that  they  had  exhausted  their 
amusement  appropriation  for  this  week. 
146 


INTERLUDE 

I  don't  mean  that  they  enjoyed  these  experiences. 
They  honestly  went  hungry.  They  endured  a  gen 
uine  disappointment  over  not  seeing  Charlie  Chap 
lin  in  his  burlesque  of  Geraldine  Farrar.  But  these 
pangs  could  be  looked  at  as  isolated  phenomena,  not 
as  the  omens  of  a  dreary  future;  which  made  an 
enormous  difference. 

The  most  delicious  thing  about  their  new  mode 
of  life  was,  perhaps,  its  intimacy.  They  had  never 
lived  intimately  before,  and  this  fact  had  a  deeper- 
lying  cause  than  Celia's — the  old  Celia's — aloofness 
or  her  husband's  shyness ;  this  was  the  spirit  of  the 
social  group  of  which  they  formed  a  part.  No 
group  in  the  whole  social  system  is  so  enslaved  by 
its  own  conventions  as  this  prosperous,  rising,  sub 
urban  class.  It  is  the  determination  to  rise,  of 
course,  that  does  it.  The  smaller  group,  just  above, 
which  has  reached  what  it  considers  the  summit, 
can  afford  to  relax  a  little ;  can  even,  within  rigor 
ous  limits,  of  course,  make  a  feature  of  its  indif 
ference  to  what  other  people  think  of  its  actions. 

But  Celia  and  her  friends  and  their  husbands, 
147 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

with  a  summit  in  sight  just  ahead,  had  to  keep  in 
the  procession.  The  number  and  variety  of  their 
entertainments  were  regimented  with  almost  mili 
tary  precision.  They  gave  one  another  more  or  less 
the  same  dinners  and  lunches ;  they  followed  one  an 
other,  sheeplike,  into  the  same  recreations,  the  same 
charities;  read  the  same  books,  discussed  the  same 
ideas.  And,  since  their  lives,  in  a  sharply  bounded 
suburban  community,  were  very  visible  to  one  an 
other,  they  conformed  pretty  much  to  the  same 
domestic  code — subscribed  to  the  same  standards. 

Well,  and  intimacy  was  distinctly  not  good  form 
among  them.  The  notion  sprang,  perhaps,  from 
novels  about  the  English  aristocracy.  Anyhow, 
between  husbands  and  wives,  the  proper  manner  was 
one  of  rather  hostile  indifference.  The  sort  of 
things  they  were  to  say  to  each  other  when  others 
were  about  were  sharp  little  witticisms. 

And  this  attitude  carried  itself  over  into  their 
private  life,  an  imposition  guaranteed  by  their  serv 
ants,  who  were  hired  from  one  house  to  another, 
and  who  formed  almost  as  close  a  society  as  they 
148 


INTERLUDE 

did.  That  a  husband  and  wife  should  have  sepa 
rate  rooms  to  dress  and  sleep  in  was  a  matter  of  ele 
mentary  decency. 

The  three-room  flat,  of  course,  put  an  end  to  all 
that  in  more  senses  than  one.  Their  one  bedroom 
was  just  an  alcove,  really,  separable  by  curtains — 
as  yet  unprovided — from  their  living-room.  When 
they  turned  the  key  in  the  door  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs,  they  were  as  secure  against  intrusion  as  a 
pair  of  pioneer  settlers  on  a  prairie.  And  they 
reverted,  in  many  respects,  to  the  simplicity  of 
peasants. 

But  the  astonishing  discovery  that  they  made  was 
that  this  material  intimacy  flowered  out  into  a  spir 
itual  intimacy  that  neither  of  them  had  dreamed  of 
before.  You  couldn't  pretend  much  at  close  quar 
ters  like  that.  You  couldn't  nurse  a  grievance  be 
hind  a  politely  intangible  manner,  or  a  noble,  long- 
suffering  dignity.  There  was  no  standard,  not 
their  own,  that  they  must  be  always  acting  with 
deference  to.  And  the  consequence  was  that  things 
got  said  out,  that  they  came  to  know  not  only  each 
149 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

other's  minds,  but  their  own.  They  had  occasional 
sharp  little  quarrels,  like  the  explosion  of  fire 
crackers,  during  which  they  said  and  did  things  to 
each  other  which  would  inexpressibly  have  shocked 
their  respectable  friends.  But  these  encounters  left 
no  after-effects ;  no  virtuous,  self -pitying  sulks. 

They  began,  now  that  they  had  stopped  trying 
to  live  up  to  anything,  to  have  real  fun — a  rather 
rowdy,  rough-and-tumble  sort  of  fun,  a  good  deal 
of  it  due  perhaps  to  their  extensive  patronage  of 
the  movies.  This  was  their  theory  of  it,  anyway. 

The  movies,  of  course,  weren't  their  only  form 
of  entertainment.  They  took  extraordinary  street 
car  rides.  It's  amazing,  you  know,  how  amusing 
a  street-car  ride  can  be  to  a  jovially  minded,  rather 
outrageously  behaved  pair,  snuggled  together  on 
one  of  the  back  seats  and  guessing,  in  whispers, 
most  grotesquely  and  injuriously  sometimes,  about 
the  condition  and  business  of  other  passengers.  It 
is  possible  to  work  a  variant  on  the  game,  too,  by 
getting  on  separately,  at  different  corners,  and  then 
150 


INTERLUDE 

elaborately  making  each  other's  acquaintance,  to 
the  scandal  of  the  car,  and  getting  off  together. 

Celia  was  really  shocked,  though,  one  night, 
when  Alfred  suggested  that  they  go  to  a  dance- 
hall.  Certain  friends  of  Celia's,  in  her  former  in 
carnation,  made  it  almost  their  one  business  in  life 
to  crush  out  the  dance-hall  evil ;  or  if  not  to  crush 
it  out,  at  least  to  step  sharply  and  disconcertingly 
on  its  toes,  and  as  a  result  of  their  reports  concern 
ing  their  slumming  investigations,  Celia  had  got 
the  idea  that  all  dance-halls  were  sinks  of  unbridled 
iniquity. 

Alfred  confessed  he  didn't  know  much  about  it 
himself,  but  he  passed  on  the  remark  of  a  friend 
of  his — a  man  who  knew  the  brightly  lighted  world 
very  well:  "The  majority  of  people  in  any  of  those 
places  are  decent.  Or,  at  least,  they're  acting  de 
cently  at  any  given  moment."  He  said  that  was 
what  made  all  these  stage  and  moving-picture  pro 
ductions  of  fast  restaurants  and  tough  dances  so 
ridiculously  unreal.  They  probably  weren't,  Al- 
151 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

fred   concluded,   so  black  as   they   were  painted. 
Anyhow,  he  and  Celia  could  try  and  see. 

The  place  they  hit  upon  was,  to  the  eyes  of  their 
innocence  at  least,  perfectly  harmless — they  never 
stayed  very  late,  it's  true — and  they  enjoyed  oc 
casional  evenings  there  prodigiously.  It  was  rather 
an  extravagance,  of  course. 

The  best  amusement  of  all  came  a  little  later, 
when  the  fine  spring  weather  really  set  in.  Alfred 
came  home,  guiltily,  one  night,  with  two  pairs  of 
roller-skates.  Neither  of  them  had  attempted  this 
amusement  since  childhood,  but,  after  one  experi 
mental  and  rather  painful  evening,  they  got  on 
very  well.  The  park  near  by  afforded  an  admirable 
place  for  it.  Sometimes  they  swung  along  arm  in 
arm,  rhythmically — romantically.  Sometimes,  in  a 
scandalous  fashion,  they  mixed  themselves  up  in  a 
miscellaneous  game  of  tag  that  one  was  pretty  sure 
to  find  going  on  in  one  of  the  larger  squares.  All 
told,  there  is  no  doubt  that  their  standard  of  civili' 
zation  deteriorated  very  much.  It  was  surprising 
how  much  younger  they  got. 
152 


INTERLUDE 

This  change  in  her  husband  was  an  astonishing 
thing  to  Celia. 

"The  man  I  married,"  she  confided  to  him  one 
night,  leaning  her  elbows  on  the  back  of  his  chair, 
and  getting  both  hands,  with  a  good  tight  grip, 
into  his  hair — he  was  like  a  big  dog  in  enjoying 
the  rougher  and  more  unceremonious  sort  of  ca 
resses — "the  man  I  married,  you  know,  was  middle- 
aged,  safe  and  sane,  and  awfully  dignified;  'always 
wholly  serious,'  the  way  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward 
wanted  her  uncle  Matthew  to  be.  But  you,  you're 
just  a  big  schoolboy — a  rather  outrageous  sort  of 
schoolboy,  too."  And,  indeed,  it  was  true  that  the 
way  he  had  been  acting  all  the  evening,  ever  since 
he'd  come  home  from  work,  warranted  the  indict 
ment. 

He  puzzled  her,  though,  by  turning  rather  grave 
and  reflective  about  it.  She  leaned  down  for  a  bet 
ter  look  at  him,  then  came  round  and  curled  up  in 
his  lap. 

"Silly,"  she  said,  "don't  try  to  pretend  you  don't 
know  how  I  love  to  have  you  like  that !" 
153 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

He  pulled  her  up  in  a  voluminous  embrace  that 
was  still  a  little  absent-minded. 

"No,  it  wasn't  that,"  he  said.  "I  was  thinking 
of  something.  Your  speaking  of  a  schoolboy  re 
minded  me  of  it.  You  know,  I've  been  trying,  off 
and  on,  ever  since  this  happened — ever  since  that 
Saturday  night  when  I  found  you  here,  to  think 
what  it  was  like.  It  was  like  something  that  had 
happened  once  before,  I  knew,  but  I  couldn't  get 
hold  of  it.  Now  I  have. 

"It  was  when  I  was  in  fifth  grade — about  ten 
years  old,  I  must  have  been — and  I  had  a  teacher 
that  couldn't  stand  me.  I  don't  know  that  I  blame 
her  so  very  much,  after  all.  I  was  pretty  slow  and 
grubby,  much  as  you'd  expect  me  to  have  been,  and 
I  didn't  get  on  at  all.  My  special  nightmare  was 
arithmetic,  which  is  queer,  considering."  The  con 
sideration  was,  though  he  didn't  explain  this  to 
Celia,  that  he  had,  really,  an  uncanny  talent  for 
mathematics.  "I've  made  up  my  mind  since,  that  it 
wasn't  the  mathematical  part  of  the  problems  I 
couldn't  understand,  but  the  English  they  were  ex- 
154 


"The  man  I  married  was  middle-aged,  safe  and  sane. 
You're  just  a  big  schoolboy" 


INTERLUDE 

pressed  in.  However,  that  was  no  help  to  me  at 
the  time.  I  was  the  teacher's  horrible  example. 
She  used  to  say,  over  some  uncommon  piece  of  stu 
pidity  by  some  one  else,  'Why,  even  Alfred  Blair 
wouldn't  have  done  that.'  " 

Celia  made  a  little  shudder  of  disgust.  "How 
you  must  have  hated  her!"  she  said.  Then,  sus 
piciously,  "That  teacher  isn't  going  to  turn  out  to 
be  me,  is  she  ?" 

He  answered  the  second  question  with  a  "Wait 
and  see,"  but  to  the  first,  he  replied  more  thought 
fully.  "No,  I  hadn't  the  satisfaction  of  hating  her. 
If  I  could  have  taken  her  personally,  that  would 
have  been  easy.  But  she  wasn't  personal  at  all. 
She  was — teacher — you  see?  Destiny.  All  I  could 
do  was  just  despair. 

"Well,  it  got  worse  and  worse,  and  one  morning, 
on  the  way  to  school,  with  a  hopeless  lesson  ahead 
of  me  that  I  hadn't  even  tried  to  get,  I  made  up 
my  mind  to  quit.  I'd  have  to  do  some  desperate 
deed  first,  to  get  myself  expelled  from  school,  be 
cause  otherwise  I'd  be  made  to  go  back.  Then  I'd 
155 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

go  and  be  a  newsboy.  I  remember  standing  still, 
in  the  middle  of  the  sidewalk,  and  solemnly  swear 
ing  to  myself — I  think  I  said  'God  damn' — that  I'd 
do  it.  Then  I  walked  on,  trying  to  make  up  my 
mind  what  I'd  do. 

"I  considered  pretty  nearly  everything,  up  to  the 
actual  assassination  of  the  teacher,  but  the  particu 
lar  crime  wasn't  really  picked  out  when  I  got  to  the 
school. 

"Well — here's  the  point  at  last — when  I  got 
there,  there  was  a  card  on  the  door.  There'd  been 
a  case  of  smallpox  and  the  school  was  closed  until 
further  notice. 

"I'll  never  forget  that  walk  home  from  school. 
There'd  been  a  miracle  that  had  changed  the  whole 
look  of  the  world.  You  can  imagine  changing  in 
ten  minutes  from  a  prospective  criminal  who'd  got 
to  get  himself  expelled  from  school,  in  order  to  go 
and  be  a  newsboy,  to  a  kid  on  his  way  home  on 
the  first  morning  of  an  uncharted  vacation.  A 
prospector  striking  pay-ore  is  nothing  to  that,  any 
way.  And  to  me —  Well,  there  you  are.  That's 
156 


INTERLUDE 

the  nearest  approach  to  how  I've  felt  since — since 
this  happened." 

She  squeezed  up  a  little  closer  to  him.  "I  expect 
I  was  the  teacher,  though,"  she  said. 

He  gave  a  laugh  at  that.  "No,  you  lamb,"  he 
said.  "You  were  the  smallpox  notice." 

Celia  pondered  a  good  deal  upon  this  parable 
during  the  following  days.  It  illuminated  many 
things.  A  schoolboy,  reveling  in  an  unforeseen 
holiday!  That  gave  her  the  clue,  not  only  to  his 
present  state  of  mind,  but  to  what  his  state  of  mind 
must  have  been  during  the  months  that  preceded  the 
crash.  Indeed,  ever  since  their  marriage — their 
engagement — before  that,  perhaps. 

That  serious,  sober,  responsible  way  of  his  wasn't 
all  her  doing,  of  course.  He  had  never,  for  one 
thing,  enjoyed  the  four  years  of  sunlit  irresponsi 
bility,  which  is  what  most  men  manage  to  get  out 
of  their  term  at  college.  He'd  been  shouldering 
heavy  burdens  through  all  that  time.  He  was  in  the 
way  of  taking  burdens  for  granted.  That  was  why 
he  hadn't  revolted  at  the  burden  his  marriage  had 
157 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

been.  Perhaps  if  he  had  come  to  her  confidently 
expecting  the  simple  sa.  sf actions  he  craved,  she 
might  have  given  them  to  him.  It  made  her  sick 
now  to  think  how  she'd  starved  him  with  her  chilly 
superiorities  and  restraints,  her  little  lectures  and 
her  ladylikeness — the  smooth,  finely  laundered  gar 
ment  of  unrumpled  conventionality  she  had  always 
worn  before  him. 

His  still  incredulous  delight  in  her  new  ways  with 
him,  with  the  commentary  it  carried  on  what  their 
old  life  had  meant  to  him,  was  poignant  to  her 
almost  to  the  point  of  tears.  She  was  the  school 
teacher  in  that  allegory,  although  the  smallpox  card 
as  well,  and  the  playground  of  his  holiday. 

Well,  he  deserved  a  holiday,  poor  dear,  and  she 
meant  to  make  it  last  as  long  as  she  could. 

But  it's  the  essence  of  holidays,  that  they  come 
to  an  end — a  point  she'd  thought  of,  but  not 
pressed,  when  he  told  her  the  parable.  One  had  to 
go  back  to  school  some  time.  How  would  he  like 
the  new  teacher  he'd  find  when  he  went  back  ? 

The  thing  she  was  sure  he  didn't  realize,  and  that 
158 


INTERLUDE 

she  meant,  if  possible,  to  keep  him  from  finding  out, 
was  that  their  new  life  1ms  not  a  letting-out  of 
school  for  her ;  was,  on  the  contrary,  the  beginning 
of  school — the  first  real  school  she'd  ever  gone  to. 
That  he  didn't,  apparently,  even  suspect  it  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  school-hours  ended  for  her  with 
his  return  from  the  office.  From  then  on,  whether 
at  a  movie-show,  or  dance-hall,  or  roller-skating  in 
the  park,  she  was  as  gay  and  irresponsible  as  he. 
In  the  morning,  too,  for  that  matter,  when  the 
alarm-clock  routed  them  sleepily  out  of  bed,  and 
they  dressed  and  got  breakfast  simultaneously,  all 
over  the  place. 

But  from  seven-thirty,  when  he  started  down 
town,  until  the  hour  of  his  return,  life  to  Celia  was 
an  intensely  serious  business.  It  was  a  business 
that  could  easily  have  been  hatefully  dull  and  dis 
agreeable.  Under  her  old  system  of  dealing  with 
nettles,  stroking  them  just  gingerly  enough  to  get 
the  maximum  sting  with  the  minimum  effect  upon 
the  nettle,  she  could,  in  a  week,  have  come  to  regard 
herself  as  a  dismally  abused  martyr. 
159 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

Cooking  wasn't  so  bad,  though  it  was  exasperat 
ing  to  discover  that  every  ingredient  that  made 
things  taste  good  was  expensive.  But  washing 
dishes!  The  new  Celia  shared  the  opinion  of  the 
old — that  the  nastiest  substance  in  the  world  was 
greasy  dish-water.  She  hated  the  way  it  was  spoil 
ing  her  hands.  Her  feet  and  ankles  were  getting 
spoiled,  too.  They  would  spread  and  thicken  to 
appalling  proportions,  if  this  life  kept  up  long 
enough.  She  was  pretty  soft,  of  course,  all  over, 
and  during  the  first  fortnight  she  was  discovering 
new  muscles  all  the  time  that  she  had  never  known 
existed  until  they  began  to  ache. 

Her  spirit  ached,  too,  sometimes,  more  excruciat 
ingly  than  her  muscles.  Determination  and  dash 
didn't  always  win  you  a  victory.  And  when  you 
were  defeated,  you  did  feel  such  a  fool.  To  cite  a 
single  instance:  there  was  a  disastrous  day  when 
she  tackled  the  wash.  She'd  blithely  sent  it  out  to 
the  nearest  laundry  the  first  week,  and,  since  it 
hadn't  occurred  to  either  of  them  that  it  was  pos 
sible  to  economize  in  this  direction,  the  hole  this 
160 


INTERLUDE 

made  in  their  free  assets  for  the  week  was  shocking. 
There  were  holes,  too,  in  other  things.  This  laun 
dry  evidently  didn't  understand  the  nature  of  silk 
pajamas.  So,  with  an  undaunted  air,  but  feeling 
very  hollow  inside,  Celia  told  herself  that  of  course 
it  was  ridiculous  for  a  woman  in  her  position  not  to 
do  her  own  washing. 

Her  direst  forebodings  were  more  than  borne  out 
by  the  event.  There  was,  it  appeared,  a  technique 
in  this  business  which  her  own  experience — limited 
to  the  washing-out  of  sheer  little  blouses  and  hand 
kerchiefs,  had  not  provided  her  with.  And  the  hor 
rible  fatigue  of  it!  Before  she  had  even  finished 
the  washing  part,  her  back  ached  as  if  she  had 
broken  it. 

And  when  it  came  to  the  ironing !  Well,  if  you're 
curious,  just  try  to  iron  a  pair  of  double  bed-sheets 
by  hand  yourself.  Before  she  got  through  with 
them,  those  two  sheets  represented  a  vast,  illimitable 
acreage — enough  for  a  country  estate.  Then,  Al 
fred  had  a  horrible  predilection  for  the  very  thin 
nest  kind  of  gauzy  woolen  underwear  and  socks, 
161 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

which  had  to  be  bathed  as  tenderly  as  a  young 
baby. 

She  told  him,  when  he  came  home  that  night, 
with  a  hysterical  attempt  at  jocularity,  that  he'd 
have  to  wash  those  things  for  himself  thereafter. 
Perhaps  they'd  let  him  go  in  swimming  with  them 
on,  in  the  public  bathhouse  in  the  park.  They 
could  dry  on  him  then  and  perhaps  not  shrink. 

The  problem  was  solved  by  a  compromise.  They 
learned  to  be  less  reckless  about  using  things  that 
had  to  be  washed,  and  the  flat  things  were  sent  out 
to  the  laundry. 

But  I'm  not  going  into  the  details  of  Celia's 
schooling.  They'd  be  voluminous.  Literally,  what 
she  didn't  know  when  she  took  on  the  job  of  being 
a  wage-earner's  wife  would  fill  a  book.  Anyway, 
that  isn't  the  story. 

But  her  spiritual  attitude  toward  those  hard  les 
sons  is  a  part  of  the  story.  That  she  kept  herself 
from  sagging  and  drudging  through  them,  and 
submitting,  by  this  attitude,  to  a  spiritual  defeat, 
was  due  mostly  to  two  causes.  One  of  them  was 
162 


INTERLUDE 

the  consciousness  that  she  was — putting  it  over 
with  Alfred,  to  an  extent  she  hadn't  dreamed  of 
when  she  made  the  threat  the  night  of  the  dinner 
party. 

He'd  been  dangerously  near  right  in  the  opinion 
of  her  he'd  unconsciously  expressed  that  night. 
The  old  Celia,  if  she  hadn't  been  burnt  to  ashes  in 
the  fire  of  the  new  Celia's  wrath,  might  easily 
enough  have  done  just  what  her  husband  had  ex 
pected  she  would. 

But  you  couldn't  make  Alfred  believe  that  now 
— not  on  the  oath  of  the  Recording  Angel.  He  was 
still  in  the  depths  of  contrition,  as  far  as  so  happy 
a  man  could  be,  over  the  injustice  he'd  done  her. 
And  a  contrite  husband,  aware  that  he  has  never, 
until  now,  appreciated  you,  is  a  much  more  stimu 
lating  companion  to  live  with  than  an  aggrieved 
but  nobly  forgiving  one.  It  was  a  wonderful  stim 
ulus,  living  up  to  his  new  and  still  wondering  opin 
ion  of  her. 

There  was  another,  which  she  was  less  conscious 
of.  This  new  life  of  hers  had,  extraordinarily,  the 
163 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

quality  of  being  alive.  It  was  real.  It  took  hold. 
The  things  she  did  were  effectual.  They  made 
things  come  out  differently  from  the-  way  they'd 
otherwise  have  come  out. 

Take  the  matter  of  economy.  There  was  so 
much  money — real  money,  not  an  impalpable  bank- 
balance — to  meet  their  current  necessities  through 
the  week.  The  amount  of  that  which  she  had  left 
on  Saturday  night  was  what  they  could  have  fun 
with  through  the  next  week.  There  was  always 
a  vivid  emotion  of  triumph,  or  of  chagrin,  when 
it  came  to  displaying  that  residuum  to  her  husband. 

This  same  quality  of  vividness  characterized,  in 
deed,  pretty  much  everything  about  her  new  life. 
The  experiences  of  that  interminable,  wonderful 
day,  when  she  had  sold  her  clothes  and  bought  the 
furniture  had  been  true  omens. 

She  had  expected  to  be  lonely ;  and,  in  the  social 
sense,  of  course,  she  was.  For  none  of  their  sub 
urban  friends  had  been  given  a  corrected  version  of 
the  story  of  a  flight  out  west  somewhere,  that  had 
been  made  up  for  Ruth  Collier.  But,  to  her  aston- 
164 


INTERLUDE 

ishment,  she  found  herself  tasting  the  joys  of  real 
companionship  as  she  had  never  known  them  be 
fore.  I  don't  mean  with  Alfred,  but  during  the 
daytime,  while  he  was  at  the  office — casual  people 
who  sold  her  things  in  the  little  shops,  people  she 
met  day  after  day  during  her  afternoon  breath 
taking  in  the  park.  Foremost  of  these,  an  old 
Garibaldian  gardener.  Then  there  was  the  librarian 
at  the  substation  of  the  public  library,  and  the 
cadaverous-looking  Russian  boy  who  brought  them 
a  loaf  of  whole-wheat  bread  every  other  afternoon, 
and  who  she  discovered  to  be  an  absolutely  au 
thentic  Nihilist.  And,  first  and  always,  Larry 
Doyle  with  his  idolized  youngest  daughter,  who 
went  to  business  college,  and  the  son,  who  was  a 
trouble-man  in  the  employ  of  the  telephone  com 
pany.  They  all  came  closer,  somehow — gave  her 
more  and  took  more  from  her,  than  people  in  the 
old  life,  whom  she'd  called  by  their  first  names  for 
years. 

Figuratively,  she  and  those  old  acquaintances 
had  always  felt  one  another  through  gloves.    Well, 
165 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

now,  imagine  the  sensations  of  a  person  who  has 
always  worn  gloves,  whose  hands  have  never  known 
contact  with  anything  except  the  inside  of  his 
gloves.  Imagine  his  sensations  when  he  first  took 
them  off;  how  sharp  and  exciting  they  would  be 
— painful,  sometimes,  but  worth  the  pain.  That 
will  give  you  a  notion  of  Celia.  She  had  just  come 
alive.  There  it  is  in  two  words. 

Coming  alive,  she  began  experiencing  a  strong 
emotional  interest  in  live  things — growing  things; 
the  vegetation  of  the  young  spring,  so  tenderly 
nourished  by  the  old  gardener  in  the  park.  He  so 
old,  but  getting  a  fresh  vicarious  life  out  of  his 
plants. 

She  experienced  in  herself  a  longing  to  make 
things  grow.  Window-boxes  in  the  flat,  that  was 
her  first  idea,  which  expanded  to  a  day-dream  of 
an  acre,  not  too  far  from  town  for  Alfred,  where, 
while  he  was  away  at  work,  she  could  have  flowers 
and  garden  vegetables — chickens. 

But  that  was  only  the  fringe  of  the  idea.  The 
core  of  it  she  didn't  reach  till  a  little  later.  She 
166 


~ 


INTERLUDE 

came  upon  it,  one  afternoon,  in  the  park,  and 
stopped  with  a  sob  too  sudden  to  be  repressed.  She 
knew  now  what  the  growing  thing  was  she  really 
wanted.  Before  her  eyes  was  a  common  enough 
sight,  a  mother — Italian,  she  looked — sitting  on 
one  of  the  benches  nursing  a  baby. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

GERMINATION 

IT  was  this  discovery  of  hers,  really,  that  marked 
the  end  of  the  second  chapter — for  Celia,  any 
way.  The  growing  strength  of  her  new  desire  car 
ried  her  along  like  the  current  of  a  river.  The  grati 
fication  of  it  would  mean  an  end  to  her  husband's 
holiday.  They  couldn't  have  a  baby  in  a  place  like 
this.  He  must  have  space,  and  clean  sweet  air  and 
sunshine ;  that  acre,  if  possible,  and  a  cow. 

She  dwelt  on  the  details  of  the  dream  lovingly. 
But  she  hesitated  over  telling  her  husband  about  it, 
partly  from  a  new  shyness  which  made  it  sweet  to 
keep  the  wonder  of  it  to  herself  for  a  while,  partly 
from  the  very  clear  realization  of  what  the  accom 
plishment  of  it  would  require  from  her  husband. 
Often,  during  the  first  few  weeks  of  their  life  here, 
he  had  spoken  to  her  of  the  wonderful  relief  it  was 
having  merely  routine  work  to  do — no  responsibil- 
168 


GERMINATION 

ity  beyond  the  mere  carrying  out  of  his  instruc 
tions,  after  all  those  months  of  maddening  worry. 

The  undertaking  of  a  baby  would  mean,  of 
course,  the  end  of  all  that;  would  involve  the  ex 
ercise  of  more  imaginative  and  better-paid  powers. 
She  shrank  from  asking  him  to  begin  looking  about 
for  a  more  responsible  job,  even  for  the  reason  she 
would  have  to  offer.  She  wouldn't  want  to  name 
this  new  mysterious  desire  of  hers  in  that  connec 
tion  at  all.  Of  course,  she  might  not  have  to.  He 
might  see  the  necessity  for  himself.  But,  equally, 
he  might  not.  Men  were  ignorant  about  such  mat 
ters.  It  might  not  strike  him  that  they  couldn't 
have  a  baby  right  here,  in  this  teeming  neighbor 
hood,  with  scarlet  fever,  whooping  cough  and  mea 
sles  lurking  in  every  street-car  and  along  the 
benches  in  the  park.  And  perhaps  pretty  soon 
he'd  end  his  holiday  of  his  own  accord. 

She'd  noticed  something  a  little  different  about 
him  lately — unexplained  preoccupations,  the  cessa 
tion  of  casual  chat  about  the  deeds  of  his  fellow 
draftsmen  and  the  routine  of  his  office  work.  So, 
169 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

for  a  while,  with  a  patience  that  was  new  to  her, 
she  waited.    Then  this  happened. 

One  hot  Saturday  night,  after  they'd  virtuously 
decided  to  do  up  the  dishes  in  order  to  leave  their 
holiday  to-morrow  as  free  as  possible,  but  still  hung 
lazily  over  the  supper-table  while  they  summoned 
resolution  enough  to  put  the  disagreeable  job 
through,  Alfred  said: 

"I  had  a  funny  encounter  in  the  street  to-day; 
ran  into  Major  March."  But  he  didn't  go  on  from 
there,  as  he  might  have  been  expected  to,  so  she 
said: 

"I  don't  believe  I  ever  heard  of  the  major.  Who 
is  he?" 

"Not  the  major,"  he  corrected.  "Major.  It's 
his  first  name.  He's  a  queer  genius  of  an  in 
ventor.  I  had  an  idea  I'd  told  you  about  him.  You 
know,  I  think  a  man  ought  to  be  able  to  get  heavy 
damages  from  his  parents  for  naming  him  Major 
when  his  last  name  was  going  to  be  March.  Some 
people  seem  to  go  out  of  their  way  to  make  people 
ridiculous  with  the  names  they  give  them." 
170 


GERMINATION 

"Was  he  the  inventor,"  Celia  asked,  "who  was 
going  to  make  your  everlasting  fortune  and  didn't 
— the  one  you  gave  the  fifteen  thousand  dollars 
to?" 

He  shot  a  look  at  her,  and  said,  with  a  laugh, 
"Yes,  that's  the  man.  But  I  didn't  realize  I'd  told 
you  about  my  having  gone  in  with  him.  I  thought 
I'd  kept  that  pretty  dark." 

"You  told  me  about  it,"  she  explained,  "the  night 
of  that  last  dinner-party,  when  you  told  me  such 
a  lot  of  things."  She  went  on,  after  a  moment's 
silence.  "What  did  he  say  to-day  ?  Did  he  tell  you 
that  his  great  invention  was  coming  out  right,  after 
all?" 

Once  more  he  looked  at  her  in  that  rather  odd 
way — surprised,  but  rather  more  than  that — almost 
startled.  But  then  he  laughed. 

"Not  exactly.  It  was  the  old  story.  He  needed 
just  two  thousand  dollars  more.  That  was  all  that 
stood  between  him  and  untold  wealth.  He'd  got  his 
big  people  interested.  He'd  got  the  thing  right 
beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  But  he  had  to  dem- 
171  ' 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

onstrate  it  to  them  with  some  rather  elaborate  lab 
oratory  tests.  The  two  thousand  was  to  be  for 
that.  Then  all  his  trouble's  over." 

"Do  you  suppose  it's  true?"  she  asked. 

"Oh,  there's  no  doubt  he  thinks  so.  The  poor 
little  cuss  is  the  soul  of  honor.  And  lord!  He 
may  be  right  about  it.  Very  likely  he  is.  He 
sounded  quite  convincing." 

There  was  a  little  pause,  then  he  went  on,  with 
a  smile.  "I'd  never  admit  that,  if  there  were  the 
slightest  possibility  of  my  giving  him  the  money. 
I've  had  my  lesson,  and  I  don't  need  to  be  taught 
it  twice.  But  as  long  as  the  possibility  doesn't  ex 
ist — "  He  broke  off  there,  thinking  she  meant  to 
speak,  but  if  she  had  she'd  changed  her  mind 
about  it. 

"Come  along,"  he  said.  "Let's  get  through  the 
dishes." 

But  she  detained  him  with  an  outstretched  hand. 
"Let's  fix  the  budget  first,"  she  said. 

It  was  their  Saturday  night  routine  to  take  his 
pay-envelope  and  divide  its  contents  into  various 
172 


GERMINATION 

funds  to  cover  the  next  week's  expenditures.  But 
to-night,  upon  her  asking  for  it,  his  face  went  sud 
denly  blank.  Then: 

"Good  gracious !"  he  said.  "I  forgot  to  tell  you. 
They've  given  me  another  raise.  Thirty  a  week 
now.  What  do  you  think  of  that?" 

"Oh,  that's  great !"  she  cried.    "Let's  see  it." 

"I  haven't  got  it,"  he  said.  "I  expect  they  mean 
to  pay  me  by  check  from  now  on.  Thirty  a  week 
counts  as  salary  instead  of  wages." 

Her  face  paled  a  little,  and  she  had  to  swallow 
the  lump  in  her  throat  before  she  could  speak. 

"That's  true,  isn't  it,  Fred?"  she  asked.  "You 
— you  aren't  trying  to  spare  me  something?  You 
haven't — lost  your  job?" 

He  came  around  the  table  quickly  and  took  her 
in  his  arms.  "No,  I  haven't  lost  my  job,"  he  said. 
"I  give  you  my  word  for  that.  Were  you  really 
frightened?" 

She  pulled  in  a  long  breath  and  let  it  out  explo 
sively.  That  answered  him. 

"But  look  here,  Fred,"  she  said  earnestly. 
173 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

"Wouldn't  they  be  willing  to  go  on  giving  it  to 
you  in  the  same  way — in  real  money,  in  an  envelope, 
every  Saturday  night?  That's  the  basis  of  every 
thing,  you  see — knowing  what  we've  got  and  what 
we've  got  to  do  without." 

He  admitted  she  was  right  and  said  he'd  get  them 
to  do  it  that  way.  He  was  sure  they  wouldn't  mind. 

She  dismissed,  vigorously  and  contemptuously, 
from  her  mind  a  thought  that  popped  into  it,  of 
the  contrast  between  the  manner  in  which  he  had 
made  this  announcement  to-night  and  that  with 
which  he  had  told  her  of  his  former  rise  from 
the  original  twenty-two  fifty  to  twenty-five.  He'd 
shouted  his  news  to  her  from  the  doorway  that 
other  time,  and  waved  his  envelope  at  her — extracted 
and  displayed,  in  all  their  glory,  the  five,  flat,  new, 
five-dollar  bills.  And  they'd  spent  that  evening 
calculating,  with  the  most  minute  exactitude,  how 
they'd  spend  that  surplus  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents 
in  a  riotous  celebration  the  next  day.  Certainly 
things  hadn't  gone  like  that  to-night,  and  the 
174 


GERMINATION 

change  might  well  be  thought  significant  of  some 
thing. 

But  it  was  easier  to  refrain  from  speculating 
about  it  because  her  mind  was  so  well  occupied  by 
something  else — a  fascinating  breath-taking  possi 
bility,  which  wouldn't  consent  to  be  dismissed  as 
absurd;  that  came  back,  at  all  events,  every  time 
she  did  dismiss  it  that  way,  with  more  assurance 
about  itself,  more  the  air  of  a  serious  plan.  It 
kept  her  awake  a  long  time  that  night.  It,  and  the 
necessity  for  lying  very  rigorously  still,  in  order 
not  to  disturb  Fred.  When  at  last  she  did  move, 
she  found  he'd  been  awake  all  the  time. 

He  said,  without  preface,  "Celia,  are  you  getting 
tired  of  it?" 

She  asked,  "Of  what?"  though  somehow  she 
knew. 

"Of  living  like  this.  Of  the  flat,  and  cooking, 
and  washing  dishes.  Are  you  beginning  to  hate 
It?" 

"Why,  I  love  it,"  she  cried,  with  a  little  catch 
175 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

in  her  voice.  "Surely  you  know  that.  I've  never 
been  so  happy.  Life's  never  meant  so  much. 
Only — "  Her  voice  faded  out  there  and  there  was 
a  long  silence — minutes,  it  seemed. 

Then,  as  if  out  of  a  stiff  throat,  he  asked,  "Only 
what?" 

With  a  little  sob  she  wound  her  arms  around  him 
and  nestled  close.  "Nothing — yet,"  she  said. 

With  that  answer  he  seemed  content. 

She  was  content,  too,  and  soon  fell  happily 
asleep.  Because  now  her  mind  was  made  up.  The 
fascinating  possibility  had  become  a  resolution. 

On  Monday  morning,  about  half  past  eight, 
after  the  breakfast  things  were  out  of  the  way, 
she  drew  out  of  the  bottom  of  Alfred's  trunk,  where 
it  had  lain  hidden  beneath  some  things  he  hadn't 
happened  to  want,  a  package  whose  solidly  rectan 
gular  form  was  still  indifferently  disguised  by  the 
clumsy  wrappings  it  had  worn  when  it  had  lain  on 
the  floor  between  a  furiously  angry  husband  and 
wife,  who  had,  respectively,  refused  in  the  most 
176 


GERMINATION 

passionate  manner  to  avail  themselves  of  the  oppor 
tunities  it  offered. 

Celia  looked  at  it  with  a  rueful  smiling  memory 
of  the  row  it  had  precipitated.  It  was  still  entitled 
to  be  called  the  skeleton  in  their  closet,  since  it  had 
never  been  mentioned  by  either  of  them  since  that 
morning. 

She  dressed  as  well  as  she  could,  then  set  off 
down-town  with  the  package  under  her  arm.  There 
were  only  two  questions  in  her  mind  now.  Could 
she  sell  it,  this  jewelry  of  hers,  for  two  thousand 
dollars  ?  And  if  she  could  not,  would  that  inventor 
be  able  to  get  on  with  a  little  less? 


CHAPTER  IX 

ALFEED,  MEANWHILE 

CELIA  might  well  have  given  more  weight  than 
she  did  to  that  new  preoccupied  manner  of  her 
husband's,  and  she  might  have  taken  more  seriously 
than  she  did  the  contrast  between  his  offhand  way 
of  announcing  that  his  pay  had  been  raised  from 
twenty-five  to  thirty  dollars  a  week,  and  his  previous 
excitement  over  the  announcement  that  it  had  been 
raised  to  twenty-five.  She  would  have  done  so,  no 
doubt,  but  for  that  preoccupation  of  her  own  about 
which  I  have  told  you.  But  even  if  she  had  allowed 
speculation  to  run  riot — gone  to  her  inferential 
limit,  she'd  hardly  have  come  abreast  of  the  facts. 
For  a  month,  indeed,  after  Alfred  Blair  had 
taken  his  new  job,  he  had,  just  as  he  told  her,  rev 
eled  in  the  irresponsibility  of  it.  He  had  sat  over 
his  table  from  eight  to  twelve,  and  from  one  to  five, 
doing  the  work  before  him  with  an  almost  contemp- 
178 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

tuous  ease,  exercising  a  set  of  faculties  that  a  long 
and  early  training  had  almost  transmuted  into  in 
stincts,  while  the  inner  man  of  him  rejoiced  in  long- 
drawn  breaths  and  the  delicious  relaxation  of  racked 
nerves.  He  was  like  a  man  washed  ashore  from  a 
wreck,  exhausted  by  the  struggle  with  tempestuous 
seas,  content  to  lie  for  a  while  on  the  sun-warmed 
sands,  incurious  as  to  what  his  new  island  domain 
might  have  in  store  for  him. 

The  first  stirrings  of  curiosity  he  repressed  se 
verely.  Each  time  he  caught  his  mind  reaching  out 
to  grasp  the  essentials  of  the  work  he  was  doing, 
criticizing  the  engineering  of  his  superiors,  decid 
ing  how  the  thing  really  ought  to  be  done,  he 
checked  the  impulse  vigorously.  It  was  none  of 
his  business  whether  the  job  was  done  right  or 
wrong,  economically  or  extravagantly.  Had  he 
ever  been  as  happy  in  his  life  before  as  he  was  right 
now  ?  Well  then,  why  spoil  a  good  thing  ?  Hadn't 
he  had  enough  worry  and  trouble  in  the  past  year 
and  a  half  to  last  him — a  while  longer,  anyway? 
He  had.  As  a  means  of  further  reassuring  him- 
179 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

self  on  this  point,  he  had  talked  to  Celia  about  the 
pleasure  he  was  taking  in  the  routine  nature  of  his 
work. 

But  he  couldn't  keep  this  up  indefinitely.  To 
the  trained  athlete  it  is  unendurable  not  to  exercise. 
Heart,  lungs  and  muscles  cry  aloud  for  the  tests 
they  are  accustomed  to.  And  the  man  who  has 
made  trained  athletes  of  his  judgment  and  imag 
ination  can't  leave  them  out  of  his  reckoning  in 
definitely.  They'll  begin  taking  hold  some  day,  in 
spite  of  him.  They  won't  be  satisfied,  either,  by 
the  mere  acknowledgment  on  his  part,  of  the  possi 
bility  or  the  Tightness  of  the  things  they  have 
pointed  out  to  him.  They'll  never  let  him  alone 
until  he  has  harnessed  all  his  energy  to  the  task 
of  making  the  possibilities  they  have  pointed  out 
come  true. 

Do  you  remember — I'm  sure  you  will  if  you're 
old  enough — the  classical  story  of  the  young  prin 
cess  and  her  pet  tiger?  It  was  either  in  the  third 
reader  or  the  fourth,  I  can't  be  sure  which.  At  all 
events,  the  tiger  was  a  perfectly  amiable  beast  and 
180 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

enjoyed  the  complete  confidence  of  the  princess,  the 
secret  being  that  his  diet  was  confined  to  milk  and 
biscuits.  But  one  day,  in  a  fit  of  affection,  he  be 
gan  licking  the  princess's  hand,  and  his  rough 
tongue  presently  wore  through  the  skin,  so  that  he 
tasted  blood.  Whereupon,  without  remorse,  he  pro 
ceeded  to  eat  up  the  princess. 

I  don't  claim  perfection  for  my  analogy,  since 
the  princess  of  my  tale  is  the  oily,  toothpick-chew 
ing  foreman  of  the  drafting-room,  whom  I  intro 
duced  to  you  in  the  act  of  hiring  Alfred  Blair. 
The  parallel  would  be  closer,  too,  if  the  tiger  in  the 
legend  were  not  an  innocent  cub,  but  a  reformed 
man-eater,  who  had  gone  upon  a  milk  diet  voluntar 
ily.  Apart  from  these  defects,  however,  the  thing 
works  out  pretty  well,  since  it  was  a  purely  good- 
natured  impulse  to  help  his  manifestly  incompetent 
superior  by  showing  him  how  a  certain  detail  really 
ought  to  be  managed,  that  led  Alfred  to  take  his 
first  taste  of  blood ;  that  is,  of  responsibility. 

I  don't  know  whether  the  tiger  was  surprised  or 
not  when  he  discovered  that  he  had  eaten  the  prin- 
181 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

cess.  I  do  know  that  Alfred  was  genuinely  aston 
ished  over  the  discovery  that  he  had,  inadvertently, 
eaten  the  foreman.  He  got,  that  is  to  say,  this 
unfortunate  gentleman's  job. 

That's  what  happened,  however — quite  inevita 
bly,  if  one  stops  to  think  about  it — within  a  fort 
night  from  the  time  when  he  ventured  to  correct 
that  first  detail. 

I  don't  know  whether  you  will  consider  the  other 
first  step  he  took  that  day  to  have  been  inevitable 
also.  I'm  afraid  not,  without  some  explanation. 
The  step  was — and  it  proved  quite  as  important 
as  the  other — that  he  refrained  from  telling  Celia 
about  his  promotion  when  he  got  home  the  evening 
of  the  day  it  happened. 

I  won't  attempt  to  deny  that  he  ought  to  have 
told  her;  that  it  was  cowardly  and  evasive  of  him; 
and,  I'm  afraid  I  must  add,  decidedly  masculine, 
not  to  tell.  He  got  adequately  punished  for  it  in 
the  event,  as  you  are  to  be  told.  But  while  you  are 
waiting  for  that  to  happen  to  him  let  me  try  to 
show  you  how  it  looked  and  felt  to  him. 
182 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

In  the  first  place,  he  was  informed  of  his  pro 
motion  the  moment  he  arrived  in  the  office  one  morn 
ing.  If  they'd  told  him  the  last  thing  before  he 
left  for  home  the  night  before,  I  haven't  a  doubt 
he'd  have  gone  straight  to  Celia  with  it.  As  it 
happened,  he  had  a  day  to  look  his  new  job  over 
before  he  went  home,  and  it  made  him  pretty  sick. 

He'd  suspected  the  truth  about  this  big  mu 
nicipal  contract  from  the  day  he  was  hired.  And 
he'd  been  getting  little  fragmentary  glimpses  of  it 
from  day  to  day  at  his  own  drafting-board.  But 
from  his  more  elevated  position  as  superintendent 
of  the  drafting-room,  with  only  one  engineer  be 
tween  himself  and  the  contractor,  he  now  saw  the 
thing  in  all  its  naked  effrontery.  It  was  the  famil 
iar  formula  for  municipal  work:  fifty  per  cent, 
graft,  fifty  per  cent,  incompetence. 

The  maddening  thing  about  it  was,  too,  that, 
but  for  the  incompetence,  the  graft  would  not  be 
necessary.  A  man  of  decent  ability,  with  that  con 
tract  in  his  pocket,  could  deliver  the  city  an  honest 
job  and  make  as  much  legitimate  profit  out  of  it 
183 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

as  this  shifty  numb-witted  grafter  could  hope  to 
steal. 

The  position  Alfred's  incautious  display  of  tal 
ent  had  got  him  into  was  the  proverbially  uncom 
fortable  one  between  the  upper  and  the  nether  mill 
stones.  He  could  no  longer  absolve  himself,  as  he 
had  done  at  his  drafting-board,  from  all  responsi 
bility  for  the  job.  They'd  picked  him  up  and  made 
him  responsible.  Yet  they  hadn't  given  him  au 
thority  to  change  a  thing  that  really  mattered. 

If  you  will  imagine  Hercules,  with  a  tin  bucket 
and  a  scrubbing-brush,  getting  his  first  sight  and 
whiff  of  the  Augean  stables,  you  will  have  some  no 
tion  of  Alfred  Blair's  state  of  mind. 

It's  important  to  remember  that  he  was  Hercules 
— was  in  the  habit,  anyhow,  of  dealing  with  things 
in  a  Herculean  way,  turning  the  course  of  rivers 
through  them,  if  necessary.  What  I  mean  is  that 
he  really  was,  down  inside,  despite  the  temporary 
eclipse  of  the  past  few  months,  the  successful,  au 
dacious,  highly  energized  big-caliber  man  that  Celia 
married ;  a  man  accustomed  to  carrying  heavy  loads 
184 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

of  responsibility  upon  his  capacious  shoulders;  to 
the  exercise  of  a  trenchant  and  unquestioned  au 
thority  ;  to  the  accomplishment  of  big  things  in  big 
ways. 

Yesterday  a  private  in  the  ranks,  he  had  been 
able — though  barely — to  keep  alive  the  pretense 
that  the  big  man  Celia  had  married  was,  as  he  had 
told  her  the  night  of  the  dinner-party,  done  for, 
never  to  come  back.  To-day,  with  a  sergeant's 
chevron  on  his  sleeve,  the  pretense  was  demolished. 
He  knew  to-day  that  he  had  come  back — that  his 
old  powers  had  come  back.  And  the  knowledge  dis 
turbed  him  painfully. 

All  the  way  out  to  the  little  flat  that  evening 
he  fretted  over  the  situation.  He  wouldn't  be  able 
to  stand  the  new  job  very  long.  It  would  be  really 
maddening.  Eventually — likely  enough  within  the 
next  few  days — he'd  find  himself  locking  horns  with 
the  chief  engineer,  telling  him  to  go  to  hell;  put 
ting  on  his  coat  and  walking  out.  Well,  and  then 
what  could  he  do?  Try  for  another  routine  job 
at  twenty-five  a  week? 

185 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

He  wouldn't  let  himself  admit  that  this  was  not 
a  real  alternative.  Down  inside  he  knew  so  well 
that  it  was  not,  that  he  told  himself  it  was  with  most 
unnecessary  emphasis.  Put  it  all  in  a  word  and 
say  that  he  was  in  a  stew — a  stew  that  kept  getting 
hotter  as  the  packed  elevated  train  jolted  and 
creaked  around  its  curves. 

At  his  station  he  squeezed  his  way  out  automati 
cally  and  started  at  a  rapid  walk  for  home.  The 
little  street  they  lived  in  was  still  radiating  the  heat 
of  an  unseasonably  early  summer's  day.  It  radi 
ated  noise,  too,  from  a  hurdy-gurdy  and  a  ball 
game,  and  from  some  long-distance  visiting  that 
was  going  on  back  and  forth  across  the  street. 

Usually  Alfred  liked  this;  reflec'J::g,  perhaps, 
Celia's  warm  delight  in  it.  But  to-night  he  strode 
through  it  all  unheeding,  except  as  perhaps  the 
heat  and  the  confusion  added  a  few  degrees  to  the 
temperature  of  his  interior  stew.  He  walked  fast 
because,  when  he  got  to  a  certain  door — the  door 
his  latch-key  fitted,  a  miracle  ~7~s  going  to  happen. 
It  happened  every  night,  and  ^et  it  remained  none 
186 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

the  less  a  miracle.  He  never  missed  a  moment  of 
exquisite  fear  just  before  he  opened  the  door,  lest 
to-night  it  wouldn't  happen.  The  miracle  was, 
quite  simply,  that  after  he'd  opened  that  door  and 
stepped  inside,  he  was  in  a  place  called  home — a 
place  unique  in  all  the  world — a  place  of  ineffable 
security  against  all  possible  assaults  of  the  world. 
To-night,  more  than  ever,  he  was  hungry  and  im 
patient  for  it. 

It  didn't  always  happen  in  exactly  the  same  way. 
Sometimes  Celia  was  cooking  something  noisy  in 
the  kitchen  so  that  she  didn't  hear  him  until  his 
latch-key  clicked  in  the  door  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs.  But  other  times  she  heard  him  at  the  outer 
door  and  had  the  inner  one  open  for  him  before  he 
was  half-way  up. 

This  was  what  happened  to-night,  and  he  got 
his  first  hug  out  on  the  landing.  They  squeezed 
through  the  narrow  doorway  in  one  lump.  Then 
she  held  him  off  for  a  look. 

"You're  tired  to-night,"  she  said.  "Almost  wor 
ried.  Right  up  there."  The  spot  she  indicated 
187 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

with  her  lips  was  between  his  eyebrows.     "Noth 
ing's — gone  wrong  to-day,  has  it?" 

"Never  less  in  the  world,"  he  assured  her.  And, 
if  she'd  waited  a  second,  he  might  have  gone  on 
and  said  the  thing  right  out.  But  she  went  straight 
on  and  supplied  an  explanation  for  herself. 

"It's  just  the  heat,  of  course.  That  made  you 
want  to  smoke,  and  the  smoker  was  packed — " 

He  pushed  her  away  a  little.  "I  must  be  a  pretty 
loathsome  object,  and  no  mistake  —  sweaty  and 
dirty,  with  a  little  more  beard  than  usual  on  ac 
count  of  the  heat,  and  then  that  smoking-car  was 
the  limit!  I  ought  to  have  freshened  up  a  bit  be 
fore  I  let  you  come  close." 

Her  answer  was  to  give  a  contented  little  laugh, 
hug  him  up  as  tight  as  she  could,  and  cuddle  her 
face  down  against  his  chest.  "Do  you  suppose  I 
mind?"  she  said.  "Do  you  mind  me  the  way  7  am ?" 

She  wore,  as  she  usually  did  at  this  time  of  day, 
a  big  all-over  apron  with  short  sleeves,  instead  of 
a  dress,  and  a  little  cap  that  she  could  tuck  all  of 
her  hair  into. 

188 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

His  answer  didn't  require  any  words,  but  his 
memory  gave  him  a  lightning  flash  of  a  contrasting 
situation  between  them — the  time  he'd  come  home 
on  the  eve  of  that  last  dinner-party  of  theirs,  come 
home  to  tell  her  that  he  was  through  with  the  life 
they'd  been  living;  that  he'd  endured  it  up  to  the 
last  day,  and  that  this  was  it.  He'd  found  her 
half-dressed  before  her  toilet-table,  with  all  her 
sensuously  alluring  paraphernalia  about  her — the 
rose-colored  stockings  and  slippers  which  matched 
the  gown  which  lay  across  the  foot  of  the  bed — 
the  perfume  of  her  powder  subtly  pervading  the 
air  as  he  came  close  and  asked  her  for  a  kiss.  She 
had  drawn  sharply  away  from  him,  charged  him 
with  having  ridden  out  in  the  smoker,  and  wondered 
what  unspeakable  tobacco  men  smoked  in  such 
places.  Then  she  had  urged  him  to  hurry  along 
and  dress,  because  there  wasn't  time  to  fool,  really. 

That    girl,    against    whom   his    resentment   had 

flared  almost  to  the  temperature  of  hatred,  had  been 

— well,  not  his  same  Celia,  but  she  had  had  his 

Celia  locked  up  inside  her,  waiting  to  break  out 

189 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

when  the  shock  of  their  disaster  should  give  her  a 
chance. 

The  pungent  odor  of  the  gingham,  or  whatever 
it  was  that  her  big  apron  was  made  of,  gave  him  a 
thrill  that  none  of  the  perfumes  of  the  old  days 
had  been  capable  of  giving,  and  there  was  a  soft 
contented  warmth  in  her  voice.  There  clutched  at 
his  heart  a  passionate  fear,  and  a  passionate  re 
solve — the  fear  lest  the  new  prosperity  which 
loomed  ahead  of  him  should  carry  them  back  into 
that  old  artificial  life  where  they  lived,  not  together, 
but  in  two  separate  shells ;  the  resolve  that  at  all 
costs,  this  thing  should  not  be  allowed  to  happen. 

He'd  say  nothing  of  the  promotion  to  Celia  for 
— well,  three  or  four  days  or  a  week.  The  situation 
at  the  office  would  probably  have  taken  definite 
shape  by  the  end  of  a  fortnight,  anyway. 

He  went  on  to  tell  himself,  virtuously,  how  much 
kinder  it  was  to  Celia  not  to  tease  her  with  the  story 
of  a  promotion  which  so  easily  might  prove  illu 
sory.  Of  course,  if  the  thing  worked  out  all  right, 
or  showed  even  an  inclination  to  do  so,  he'd  tell  her 
190 


ALFRED     MEANWHILE 

at  once.  He  angrily  cast  off  the  insinuation  which 
sneaked  into  his  mind  from  somewhere  that  it  might 
be  a  good  thing  to  keep  Celia  seriously  in  the  dark 
for  any  length  of  time  as  to  his  improved  fortunes. 
What  was  he  making  all  the  fuss  about,  anyhow? 
It  wasn't  an  important  decision  he'd  just  taken. 
What  did  it  matter  whether  he  told  her  to-night 
or  three  nights  from  now?  Perhaps  he  would  tell 
her  to-night,  after  all.  But  he  didn't. 

For  a  week  the  state  of  things  in  the  drafting- 
room  remained  as  chaotic  and  hand-to-mouth  as  it 
had  looked  the  first  day.  And  then  a  new  factor 
entered  into  the  situation — well,  not  new,  but  one 
that  Alfred  hadn't  counted  on — politics — a  sharp 
bitter  fight  between  the  administration  (that's  the 
mayor  and  his  appointees,  chief  of  police,  corpora 
tion  counsel,  and  so  on)  and  the  board  of  alder 
men. 

The  mayor  of  Chicago  has  a  lot  of  power,  and 
he  can  exercise  it,  up  to  a  certain  point,  quite  irre 
sponsibly.  But  if  he  is  overtaken  by  illusions  of 
grandeur  and  neglects  to  conciliate  at  least  an  ef- 
191 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

fective  minority  of  the  aldermanic  body,  that  body 
can  make  him  wish  he  had  never  been  born. 

Well,  this  contract  that  Alfred  was  concerned 
with  had  been  one  of  the  most  attractive  displays 
in  the  mayor's  pre-election  show-window — a  senti 
mental,  half -practical,  half-baked  project  for  a 
municipal  market  which  should  loosen  the  rapacious 
clutch  of  the  commission  man  upon  the  throat  of 
the  ultimate  consumer.  And  it  is  quite  consistent 
with  our  American  impatience  of  thorough  study 
and  expert  advice,  and  our  eagerness  to  do  material 
things — to  do  something,  it  doesn't  matter  much 
what — that  this  great  project  should  have  boiled 
down,  almost  at  once,  to  the  letting  of  a  contract 
for  the  first  unit  of  a  vast  acreage  of  buildings ; 
in  short,  to  a  fat  job  for  some  loyal  liegeman  of 
the  mayor. 

And  you  will  see,  I  think,  how  naturally  it  came 
about  that  when  the  desire  arose  to  make  the  mayor 
uncomfortable,  this  job  should  have  been  picked 
out  as  the  target.  It  was  so  picked  out,  and  a  com 
mittee  of  perspicacious  and  able-minded  reformers 
192 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

(the  use  of  the  word  reformer  is  not  necessarily 
derogatory)  was  appointed  to  investigate. 

The  mere  announcement  of  the  appointment  of 
this  committee,  before  ever  it  fired  a  shot,  brought 
the  contractor  down  to  his  office  in  a  foaming  rage. 

The  grafting  politician,  in  stories  and  on  the 
stage,  is  presented  as  formidable,  wielding  vast  un 
questioned  powers ;  giving  orders  (with  a  cigar  in 
his  mouth)  to  respectful  subordinates  who  rush  to 
do  his  bidding;  anything  from  murder  down.  He 
is  inhumanly  adroit  as  well  as  grim.  Already  he 
has  made  his  millions,  and  he  is  on  his  way  to  make 
millions  more.  He  frequently  gets  "crushed,"  to 
be  sure,  in  the  last  act  or  the  last  chapter,  but  never 
until  he  has  had  a  long  and,  some  might  think, 
compensatory  run  for  his  money. 

But  the  real  grafter,  I  venture  to  say,  seldom 
enjoys  an  experience  like  that,  even  before  he  is 
forced  to  his  knees  by  the  superior  adroitness  of 
the  young  hero.  For  your  real  grafter  is  always 
grafted  upon.  Let  me  attempt  a  definition  that 
will  make  this  clear.  Graft  is  a  cash  valuation  upon 
193 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

gratitude.  The  man  who  has  just  cashed  in  on 
somebody's  gratitude  to  him,  Alfred's  contractor 
for  example,  with  his  fat  job  from  the  mayor,  must 
in  turn  honor  drafts  upon  his  own  gratitude.  If 
he  were  to  let  these  drafts  go  to  protest,  try  to 
get  his  own  work  done  on  a  basis  of  ruthless  effi 
ciency,  the  vengeance  upon  him  would  be  instanta 
neous  and  terrible.  So  he's  the  worst-served  man 
in  the  world. 

A  man  of  first-class  ability,  to  be  sure,  might 
compromise  his  way  out  of  the  difficulty — feed  his 
flock  of  lame  ducks  sufficiently  with  jobs  where  they 
couldn't  do  much  harm,  and  still  pay  competent 
people  to  do  the  real  work.  But  the  grafter  never 
is  a  man  of  first-rate  ability.  If  he  isn't  stupid,  he 
isn't  a  grafter,  since  the  rewards  of  playing  the 
game  within  the  rules  are,  to  the  mart  of  exceptional 
ability,  immensely  greater  than  any  conceivable  re 
ward  for  the  grafter. 

So  if  the  case  of  this  particular  grafter  had  been 
sorrowful  before,  it  was  really  desperate  after  the 
appointment  of  that  subcommittee. 
194 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

Alfred  witnessed  the  tragedy — not  completely, 
as  one  sees  a  performance  in  the  theater  from  the 
fourth  row,  but  in  vivid  intimate  glimpses  as  one 
sees  it  from  the  wings — outbursts  and  explosions 
that  came  through  the  glass  door  of  the  private 
office,  asides  which  he  was  supposed,  ludicrously, 
not  to  understand  when  he'd  been  summoned  into 
the  presence  for  instructions  as  to  this,  or  explana 
tions  as  to  that.  The  contractor  had  flown  to  the 
mayor,  it  seemed,  and  had  got  small  comfort  from 
him,  His  Honor  having  evidently  made  it  clear  that 
he  had  troubles  enough  of  his  own.  The  engineer 
talked  of  resigning. 

Finally  there  came  a  morning  when  Alfred  Blair 
turned,  with  a  shrug,  from  a  sheet  of  figures  he 
had  been  poring  over,  stretched  his  arms,  grinned, 
got  up  and  walked,  unsummoned,  into  the  private 
office.  The  contractor  rasped  out  a  "What  do  you 
want?"  and  resumed,  gloomily,  the  contemplation 
of  a  sheet  of  figures  of  his  own.  There  was  still 
the  suggestion  of  a  smile  on  Alfred's  face. 

"I  came  in  to  suggest,"  he  said,  "that  you  come 
195 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

to  lunch  with  me  to-day  at  one  o'clock  at  the  Union 
League  Club.  I  have  a  proposition  to  make  to 
you" 

The  contractor  started,  stared,  made  a  passion 
ate  prediction  as  to  his  state  in  a  future  world,  and 
demanded  to  be  told  what  his  subordinate  meant. 
His  amazement  was  driven  home  a  little  deeper  by 
a  realization  he  couldn't  have  explained,  that  the 
man  who  stood  there  the  other  side  of  the  desk  was 
a  subordinate  no  longer. 

Exteriorly  he  looked  just  the  same,  was  in  his 
shirt-sleeves,  his  waistcoat  unbuttoned,  his  hands 
in  his  trousers  pockets ;  but  his  air  was,  inexplica 
bly,  one  of  authority. 

"I  mean  just  that,"  he  said.  "I  have  a  propo 
sition  to  make  to  you.  Lunch  is  a  good  time  to  talk. 
The  club's  just  across  the  street." 

"Are  you  a  member  of  that  club  ?"  asked  the  con 
tractor. 

Alfred  nodded.  "If  you  object  to  it,"  he  said, 
"we  can  go  anywhere  else." 

It  was,  we  may  observe  in  parenthesis,  a  matter 
196 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

of  pure  luck  that  Alfred  had  not  resigned  from  that 
club.  He'd  paid  his  dues  for  the  year  not  more 
than  a  fortnight  before  the  crash.  He  hadn't  con 
sidered  it  luck  at  the  time;  but  there  he  was  mis 
taken.  The  effect  of  Alfred's  announcement  on  the 
contractor  was  cheap  at  a  hundred  dollars.  It 
made  a  perfect  dramatic  preparation  for  the  thing 
Alfred  was  going  to  suggest.  The  suggestion  was 
the  sort  that  wanted  preparing,  too. 

The  contractor  said  he  didn't  object  to  the  club. 

"You'll  come  then,"  said  Alfred,  not  inflecting 
it  like  a  question. 

The  contractor  said,  yes,  he'd  come,  but  wanted 
explanations.  What  was  the  idea? 

"I'll  wait  till  lunch  to  explain,  if  you  don't 
mind,"  Alfred  told  him  coolly,  and  went  back  to 
his  desk. 

These  tactics,  adroit  as  they  were,  were  not  pre- 
calculated  at  all.  They  were  just  a  symptom  that 
Alfred's  mind  was  once  more  fully  on  the  job.  His 
employer's  curiosity,  if  unsatisfied,  would  be  work 
ing  for  him  steadily  till  lunch-time.  And  the  sort 
197 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

of  lunch  he  would  give  him — the  atmosphere  with 
which  the  club  would  surround  the  lunch — would 
work  for  him,  too. 

He  gave  all  these  influences  time  to  do  their  work 
— plenty  of  time.  Then,  after  the  lighting  with 
one  match  of  two  admirable  cigars,  he  made  a  fal 
con  swoop  straight  to  the  heart  of  the  business. 

"My  proposition  is,"  he  said,  without  preface 
or  explanation,  "that  I  guarantee  you  a  profit  of 
twenty  thousand  dollars  on  this  contract  in  consid 
eration  of  a  half-interest  in  whatever  the  profits 
turn  out  to  be ;  also  in  consideration  of  your  putting 
complete  authority  over  everything  concerned  in  the 
contract  into  my  hands." 

Alfred  was  himself  again,  no  mistake.  There 
was  the  old  touch  about  these  tactics.  The  obvious 
method  of  going  about  the  business  would  have  been 
to  begin  by  dwelling  upon  the  contractor's  plight 
— the  gristly  prospect  ahead  of  him  if  things  went 
on  as  they  were  going  now,  an  opening  which  would 
have  given  the  contractor  something  to  argue  about. 
198 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

Alfred's  omission  to  say  a  word  about  this  star 
ing  fact  only  made  its  stare  the  more  sinister. 

"Your  guarantee  would  be  worth  a  hell  of  a 
lot,  wouldn't  it?"  said  the  contractor,  with  the  best 
imitation  he  could  manage  of  jovial  scorn. 

"Of  course,"  said  Alfred,  "the  only  guarantee 
that  would  be  of  any  value  would  be  the  cash  itself 
put  up  with  a  bank  pending  the  completion  of  the 
contract." 

"Look  here!"  demanded  the  contractor.  "Who 
in  blazes  are  you,  anyway?" 

"You  ought  to  know,"  Alfred  said.  He  didn't 
answer  further,  and  when  the  contractor  asked, 
"Are  you  A.  C.  Blair?"  he  merely  nodded. 

The  contractor  blew  up  at  this  point  and  spoke 
at  length  and  at  large,  the  upshot  of  his  harangue 
being  a  demand  to  know  his  competitor's  motive  in 
spying  around  his  office. 

"Not  spying,"  Alfred  said  quietly.  "You'll  see 
that  for  yourself  in  a  minute.  If  I'd  been  a  spy, 
instead  of  coming  to  you  now,  I'd  be  going  around 
199 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

to  the  council's  subcommittee  and  getting  a  job  as 
their  expert.  I  am  an  expert.  I  know  that  line  of 
work  as  well  as  anybody  in  the  United  States.  But 
I  haven't  done  that.  I've  come  to  you  and  offered 
you  an  absolutely  fair  proposition." 

"What  did  you  come  for,  then?"  persisted  the 
contractor.  "Did  you  have  a  tip  that  those  fool 
aldermen  were  going  to  butt  in?" 

Blair  hesitated  for  a  second,  then  told  the  simple 
truth. 

"No,"  he  said.  "I  needed  a  job  and  I  answered 
a  blind  ad.  in  The  News." 

"Down  and  out,  eh?"  commented  the  contractor. 
He  didn't  believe  a  word  of  Alfred's  story.  Then, 
with  a  pounce,  "Where  did  you  get  this  twenty 
thousand  dollars  ?" 

"I  haven't  it,"  said  Alfred.  "If  you  take  up  my 
proposition,  I'll  have  to  go  and  borrow  it  some 
where." 

The  contractor  stared  blankly  across  the  table. 
"Say!"  he  demanded  roughly.  "What's  the  idea, 
bringing  me  here  and  kidding  me  along  with  a  pipe 
200 


'What's  the  idea  bringing  me  here  and  kidding  me?' 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

like  that,  when  you  haven't  got  a  cent?  What  do 
you  think  it'll  get  you  ?" 

"You  don't  need  to  worry  about  that,"  Alfred 
said.  "You  aren't  out  anything  for  listening,  even 
if  it  is  a  pipe.  All  you  have  to  do  is  make  up  your 
mind  whether  you  will  accept  it  or  not,  in  case  I  can 
come  across.  That's  the  next  step — yes  or  no 
from  you.  If  it's  yes,  I'll  try  to  borrow  the  money. 
But  I've  got  to  have  a  proposition  to  borrow  it  on." 

"You've  got  no  more  chance  to  get  that 
money — "  the  contractor  murmured,  and  then  let 
the  sentence  slump  away  while  he  gazed  moodily  at 
the  table-cloth  and  the  pattern  he  was  drawing  on 
it  with  his  thumb-nail.  "What  will  you  do,"  he 
asked  at  last,  "if  I  tell  you  there's  nothing  doing?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Alfred.  "I'll  cross  that 
bridge  when  I  come  to  it." 

It  would  have  been  almost  a  relief  to  the  con 
tractor  if  Alfred  had  threatened  him  with  going  to 
the  subcommittee  and  getting  appointed  as  their 
expert.  That  would  have  given  him  something  to 
get  fighting  mad  about,  and  his  temper  craved  a 
201 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

fight.  The  threat  was  there  all  right,  though  it 
wasn't  expressed. 

Alfred  drew  a  folded  paper  from  his  pocket  and 
handed  it  across,  without  comment,  to  the  con 
tractor.  It  was  a  memorandum  of  the  bargain  he 
had  proposed,  stated  almost  as  simply  as  he  had 
stated  it  a  few  moments  before.  There  was  one 
more  paragraph  in  it,  stating  that  the  agreement 
was  of  no  effect  unless  Blair  put  up  the  money 
within  forty-eight  hours  of  their  signing  it. 

The  contractor  pondered  it  a  while  longer  with 
out  speaking.  At  last : 

"Oh,  it's  all  damned  foolishness,"  he  said. 
"You'll  never  get  the  money." 

"Don't  count  on  that,"  said  Alfred,  "or  you're 
likely  to  get  fooled.  Here,  do  you  want  a  pen  ?" 

Fifteen  minutes  later,  with  the  signed  memoran 
dum  in  his  pocket,  he  walked  into  his  bank  and  sat 
down  in  the  president's  office.  An  hour  later,  he 
walked  out  again  with  the  money. 

He  was  not  in  the  least  surprised  that  it  had 
come  out  this  way.  The  opportunity  was  so  lumi- 
202 


nously  clear  to  him,  and  his  confidence  in  his  own 
ability  to  make  the  most  of  it  so  clearly  based  on 
expert  knowledge  and  tried  ability,  that  he  could 
hardly  have  failed  to  get  the  help  he  needed.  It 
was  just  a  question  of  making  everything  trans 
parently  clear. 

His  personal  credit,  it  should  be  pointed  out,  was 
excellent.  The  way  he'd  poured  his  own  money  into 
the  cleaning  up  of  the  Waters-Macdonald  mess,  was 
a  thing  no  banker  would  be  likely  to  forget. 

He  went  straight  back  to  the  office  and  spent  the 
rest  of  the  afternoon  nailing  down  all  four  corners 
of  his  agreement  with  the  contractor.  He  meant 
to  leave  no  unstopped  rat-holes  in  that  document. 
For  heaven  knew  there  were  rats  enough! 

The  contractor  lost  his  temper  a  good  many  times, 
climbed  up  on  his  dignity,  appealed  to  the  high 
gods.  His  new  partner  was  trying  to  convert  him 
into  a  mere  figurehead. 

"Exactly,"  said  Alfred  coolly.  "That's  the  es 
sence  of  this  bargain.  My  authority's  not  to  be 
questioned,  and  everything  else  is.  I'll  do  all  the 
203 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

hiring  and  all  the  firing.  Then  those  specifications ! 
They're  crooked  from  beginning  to  end.  I'll  go  to 
the  council  and  get  them  straightened  out.  If  any 
of  your  friends  come  to  you  and  squeal,  send  them 
to  me.  But  what  I'd  do,  if  I  were  you,  would  be  to 
take  my  wife  and  go  to  the  seashore — anywhere, 
and  not  come  back  till  the  job's  done." 

The  contractor  writhed  and  struggled — would 
have  got  away  if  he  could.  But  the  numerals  on 
that  check  kept  him  fascinated. 

At  five  o'clock  it  was  all  over.  Even  as  he  had 
eaten  the  foreman  a  week  or  so  ago,  Alfred  Blair 
had  now  eaten  the  contractor. 

And  it  was  not  until  this  deed  was  fully  accom 
plished — until  he  had  put  on  his  hat  and  coat  and 
stood  ready  to  walk  out  of  the  office,  that  the 
thought  of  Celia  came  into  his  mind  at  all,  or  of 
what  the  new  situation  was  going  to  mean  to  them. 

Of  course  it  wouldn't  be  accurate  to  say  that  he'd 

acted  this  morning,  and  subsequently,  without  any 

premeditation  at  all.     He  had  meditated.     He  had, 

more  or  less,  figured  the  whole  thing  out,  but  as  a 

204 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

fanciful  project  purely — as  something  he  wasn't 
going  to  do.  His  imagination  had  to  be  at  some 
thing,  and  it  had  constructed,  he  looking  on  with 
indulgent  amusement  all  the  time,  this  project; 
had  developed  it  indeed,  down  to  some  of  its  quite 
small  details — but  always,  as  I  said,  fancifully. 
What  led  him  to  get  up  that  morning  and  walk  into 
the  contractor's  office  and  begin  to  carry  the  thing 
out,  was  impulse,  motivated  not  by  any  wish  to  pro 
vide  an  ampler  life  for  Celia  or  to  rehabilitate  him 
self ;  springing  rather  from  a  pure  impatience  to 
get  the  job  done.  The  muffing  and  fumbling  that 
had  gone  under  his  eyes,  had  irritated  him  to  the 
point  where  he  couldn't  stand  it  any  longer.  So  he 
got  up  and  took  on  the  job  himself.  That  was  all 
there  was  to  it. 

It  wasn't  all  there  was  to  it,  though.  He  realized 
this  the  first  time  he  thought  about  Celia.  She 
couldn't  be  expected — it  wouldn't  be  human  to  ex 
pect  that  she'd  want  to  go  on  living  as  they  were, 
now  that  he  was  getting  a  salary  of  a  hundred  dol 
lars  a  week  (this  was  what  he  and  the  contractor 
205 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

had  agreed  upon)  and  a  half  share  in  the  profits 
besides. 

Of  course  there  mightn't  be  any  profits — at  least 
not  for  Alfred.  To  the  eye  of  cold  reason,  that 
possibility  would  appear  to  be  worth  taking  seri 
ously.  He  didn't  take  it  very  seriously,  to  be  sure,  but 
then  he  knew  his  eye  wasn't  coldly  reasonable.  He 
knew  he  was  going  to  succeed.  Still,  one  never  lost 
any  chickens  by  refraining  from  counting  them  till 
they  were  hatched.  And  from  Celia's  point  of  view, 
mightn't  it,  perhaps,  be  a  kindness  not  to  tease  her 
with  hopes  which  she  could  see  plainly  enough 
might  turn  out  groundless  ?  Wouldn't  she  be  hap 
pier  if  he  waited  till  the  job  was  done  and  paid  for, 
and  then  presented  her  with  the  results,  in,  as  it 
were,  a  package  ?  To  balance  that  evening  when  he 
told  her  of  his  failure  ? 

But,  contemplated,  this  scene  didn't  afford  him 
any  whole-souled  satisfaction.  He  couldn't  see 
Celia  rushing  delightedly  into  his  arms  at  the  end 
of  the  recital.  The  heroines  of  the  screen  would, 
all  right — but  Celia — 

206 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

Then  there  was  another  angle  on  the  thing. 
She'd  been  a  perfectly  corking  sport  about  the 
whole  business — ever  since  that  night  when  he'd 
told  her  of  the  smash.  There  hadn't  been  a  whim 
per — a  reproach.  But  that  was  because  of  her  un 
questioning  belief  that  the  come-down  was  neces 
sary.  And  wouldn't  that  belief  be  shaken,  if  he 
were  to  go  to  her  now  and  tell  her  that  he'd  bor 
rowed  twenty  thousand  dollars,  and  made  himself  a 
partner  in  the  enterprise?  If  he  could  get  twenty 
thousand  dollars  as  easily  as  that — just  by  going 
and  asking  for  it,  why  hadn't  he  done  it  three 
months  ago?  He'd  had  just  a  touch  of  that  feeling 
himself  as  he  came  away  from  the  bank.  The  whole 
effect  of  the  day's  doings  upon  him,  was  to  make 
that  routine  work  of  his  over  a  drafting-board,  at 
twenty-two  fifty  a  week  seem  a  little  unreal — like 
playing  a  part.  Wouldn't  she  feel  that  even  more 
strongly — feel  that  she'd  been  sacrificed,  not  to  ne 
cessity,  but  to  a  mere  vagary  of  his  own  tempera 
ment  ?  Perhaps  if  he  waited  a  while  before  he  told 
her — not  until  the  job  was  finished,  of  course,  but 
207 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

for — say  another  couple  of  months,  and  then  per 
haps  broke  it  gradually,  promoted  himself  by  easy 
stages — 

He  didn't  like  that  notion  any  too  well,  either. 
Anyhow,  the  thing  wanted  thinking  over.  He  could 
take  time  for  that — a  few  days — what  would  they 
matter  one  way  or  another? — to  come  to  the  right 
conclusion.  Of  course  he'd  tell  her.  It  would  be 
outrageously  unfair  to  try  to  keep  her  in  the  darjc. 
The  only  question  was  just  how  he'd  do  it,  and 
when. 

There  is  an  insidious  and  diabolical  subtlety 
about  the  sin  of  procrastination,  which  lies  in  the 
fact  that  while  its  effects  go  on  remorselessly  piling 
up,  the  sin  itself  diminishes  in  geometrical  progres 
sion.  The  difference  between  making  a  confession 
on  the  eighth  day,  instead  of  on  the  seventh,  is  very 
much  less  than  the  difference  between  making  it  on 
the  second  instead  of  on  the  first;  while  the  differ 
ence  between  making  it  on  the  thirty-first  or  on  the 
thirtieth  is  almost  negligible: 

This  was  what  made  it  possible  to  go  on  not  tell- 
208 


ALFRED,    MEANWHILE 

ing  Celia  of  the  change  in  his  fortunes.  It  would 
be  an  outrage  to  deceive  her ;  he  admitted  that.  She 
had  earned,  if  any  human  being  ever  could  earn,  his 
completest  confidence.  Well,  and  didn't  he  mean  to 
give  it  to  her?  Of  course  he  did.  Only — not  to 
night.  To-morrow,  perhaps — or  Sunday,  when 
there'd  be  time  for  a  good  long  talk  about  it.  But 
Sunday  they'd  devoted  to  a  picnic  up  the  shore. 
Why  spoil  a  perfect  thing  like  that  with  a  lot  of 
worries  about  the  future?  Celia  was  happy,  wasn't 
she,  with  things  as  they  were?  Obviously  happier, 
healthier,  altogether  more  alive  than  she'd  ever  been 
before  in  her  life. 

So  he  went  along,  except  for  an  occasional 
twinge,  rather  easily,  until  the  night  when  his  in 
cautious  reference  to  little  Major  March,  and  his 
equally  incautious  neglect  to  bring  home  a  pay-en 
velope,  brought  him  up  standing  against  a  fact  and 
on  the  threshold  of  a  surmise.  The  fact  was  that  his 
pretended  willingness  to  tell  Celia,  his  pretended  in 
tention  to  tell  her  when  the  occasion  should  arise,  was 
completely  false.  She'd  given  him  the  occasion, 
209 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

and  instead  of  taking  it,  he  had,  in  a  panic,  delib 
erately  lied  to  her — made  up  a  hasty  excuse  about 
having  had  his  salary  raised,  so  obviously  flimsy 
and  extemporaneous,  that  it  was  a  wonder  she 
hadn't  seen  through  it. 

And  the  surmise  was  that  Celia  was  not  so  happy 
— not,  at  least,  so  contented  with  their  present  way 
of  living — as  he'd  supposed.  The  way  her  mind 
had  played  with  the  possibility  that  the  inventor 
might  make  their  fortune  after  all — as  if,  for  some 
reason,  a  fortune  were  a  desirable  thing — haa  kept 
him  awake  for  hours  that  night.  And  when  at  last, 
discovering  that  she  was  awake  too,  he  had  nerved 
himself  to  ask  her,  point-blank,  if  she  was  getting 
tired  of  the  way  they  lived — of  the  hardships  and 
deprivations  of  it  all,  and  she  had  told  him  eagerly 
that  she  was  not — she  had  begun  to  say  something 
that  would  qualify  her  answer,  and  then  stopped. 
"Only — "  It  had  taken  all  his  resolution  to  ask  her 
to  go  on.  "Only  what?"  And  she'd  said,  "Nothing 
—yet." 

Yet.     There  was  an  immense  lot  to  think  about 
behind  that  one  small  word. 
210 


CHAPTER  X 

INTERVENTION 

BARRING  one  bad  moment  just  after  she  en 
tered  the  store,  when  the  floor-walker  came 
up  and  asked,  rather  mechanically,  what  he  could 
do  for  her,  Celia  found  no  difficulty  in  carrying  out 
the  first  item  of  her  program — namely,  the  sale  of 
her  jewels. 

Old  Colonel  Forsythe,  the  senior  partner  of  the 
firm,  had  known  her  father  for  years,  and  her  since 
she  was  a  little  girl,  and  from  the  moment  she  was 
shown  into  his  office,  everything  was  easy  for  her. 
He  had,  probably,  a  bad  moment  of  his  own  after 
she'd  told  him  her  errand,  which  she  did  complete, 
in  one  sentence,  as  she  held  out  her  parcel  to  him. 

"I  want  to  sell  these  things  for  two  thousand 
dollars,"  she  said.     She  added,  over  the  look  of 
acute  unhappiness  she  saw  come  into  his  face,  "I 
mean  I  hope  they're  worth  that  much." 
211 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

He  explained,  while  he  was  cutting  the  string 
and  opening  the  package,  why  it  was  that  the 
amount  things  had  cost  was  not  a  trustworthy 
guide  to  what  they  might  be  worth  when  one  wanted 
to  sell  them.  "We  can't  sell  second-hand  jewelry, 
you  know,  and  all  we  can  pay  for  is  the  unset  stones 
and  the  bullion  value  of  the  setting." 

His  face  cleared  instantly,  though,  when  he  saw 
the  contents  of  her  treasure-box.  Alfred's  taste, 
luckily,  had  been  primitive.  It  hadn't  run  to  en 
crusted  butterflies  and  things  like  that — had  con 
fined  itself  to  what  a  gambler  or  a  professional  base 
ball-player  would  speak  of  as  rocks. 

"These  things  are  worth  considerably  more  than 
two  thousand  dollars,"  said  the  jeweler. 

"Oh,  that's  nice,"  said  Celia  comfortably.  ''But 
it's  just  two  thousand  that  I  want.  So  if  you'll 
pick  out  what  comes  to  that,  I'll  take  the  rest  back." 

The  thing  could  be  done  on  that  basis,  but  not,  it 
seemed,  so  instantaneously  as  Celia  had  supposed. 
To  his  offer  to  mail  her  a  check  during  the  day,  and 
send  the  residuum  back  to  her  by  special  messenger, 


INTERVENTION 

she  demurred.     She'd  like  to  wait  for  the  money,  if 
she  might,  and  take  it  away  in  cash. 

To  her  surprise,  he  hesitated  over  this  request, 
frowned,  drummed  his  fingers  on  the  desk — seemed 
on  the  point  of  making  some  sort  of  protest,  and 
then  instead,  said  something  that  struck  her,  for  a 
moment,  as  utterly  irrelevant,  about  the  wild  uncer 
tainties  of  the  stock-market. 

The  course  she  and  Alfred  had  been  taking  in 
the  movies  during  the  past  three  months,  supplied 
her  suddenly  with  an  explanation,  and  she  laughed. 

"Oh,  I'm  not  going  to  speculate  with  it,"  she  told 
him,  and  his  face  cleared  at  once. 

"If  only  you  knew  how  many  of  them  do  that  be 
hind  their  husbands'  backs — women  who  ought  to 
know  better — and  put  me  in  a  position  of  having  to 
choose  between  being  an  officious  meddler,  and  a 
particeps  criminis — " 

"Do  they,  really?"  said  Celia,  properly  scandal 
ized.  "But  how  silly  of  them!  They  always  lose, 
don't  they?"  The  movies,  as  I  say,  had  made  this 
perfectly  clear  to  her. 

213 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

She  was  quite  honest  about  this.  The  word  spec 
ulation  had  a  definite  meaning  to  her.  It  consisted 
in  taking  your  money  to  a  room  with  a  ticker  in  it, 
giving  it  to  a  man,  who  immediately  rushed  out  to 
the  floor  of  the  Stock  Exchange  with  it,  and  made 
wild  gestures,  while  his  victim  stayed  by  the  ticker 
and  watched  the  tape:  at  first  with  exultation — be 
cause  you  always  won  at  first — and  later  with  de 
spair.  Because,  inevitably,  you  lost  in  the  end. 
That  the  word  speculation  could  be  applied  to  the 
act  she  contemplated ;  namely,  giving  her  money — 
all  her  money,  practically — to  an  inventor,  for  the 
purpose  of  financing  the  tests  of  his  invention, 
didn't  occur  to  her. 

His  doubts  removed  by  the  unquestionable  can 
dor  of  Celia's  attitude,  Colonel  Forsythe  promptly 
thought  of  a  way  to  avoid  keeping  her  waiting. 

"I  can  give  you  two  thousand  dollars  now,"  he 
said,  "and  then,  when  these  things  are  precisely  val 
ued,  which  involves  examining  and  weighing  them 
very  closely,  you  can  come  in  and  select,  to  keep, 
214s 


INTERVENTION 

whatever  will  leave  us  the  two  thousand  dollars' 
worth  we  have  bought."  He  also  persuaded  her  to 
take  a  check  instead  of  the  twenty  hundred-dollar 
bills  she  wanted.  She  hadn't  thought  of  pick 
pockets. 

Major  March's  address — ascertained  from  the 
telephone-book,  down  in  the  lower  twenties  some 
where,  just  off  Wabash  Avenue,  involving  a  ride  in 
a  crowded  street-car — made  the  colonel's  sugges 
tion  seem  worth  taking. 

A  momentary  fright  she  had  on  the  way  down 
would  have  been  a  good  deal  more  serious  if  she  had 
had  those  twenty  hundred-dollar  bills  in  her  wrist- 
bag.  The  adventure  began  just  a  block  after  she 
had  taken  the  street-car,  when  a  man  got  on  and 
sat  down  beside  her.  The  car  wasn't  empty  enough 
to  make  this  action  of  his  really  marked.  He'd 
have  had  to  sit  down  beside  somebody.  Still  there 
were  plenty  of  other  places  where  he  might  have 
sat,  and  he  had  chosen  her  seat  rather  abruptly — 
plumped  down  in  it  without  that  customary  moment 
215 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

of  hesitation  to  give  her  a  chance  to  move  over  a 
little,  and  quite  involuntarily  she  glanced  around 
at  him. 

The  glance  reassured  her.  He  seemed  completely 
preoccupied — unaware  of  her  as  anything  but  a 
lump  that  took  up  so  much  space  in  the  seat.  He 
had  a  big  manila  envelope  in  his  hands,  which  were 
pale  and  nervously  precise  in  their  movements.  The 
moment  he  was  settled  in  his  seat,  he  put  on  a  pair 
of  tortoise-shell  spectacles,  undid  the  patent 
fastener  of  the  envelope,  and  drew  out  a  quantity  of 
typewritten  sheets,  whose  pristine  freshness  pro 
claimed  that  they  were  just  out  of  the  machine — a 
manuscript,  evidently,  that  he  was  just  fetching 
away  from  the  typist  who'd  copied  it  for  him.  An 
author,  probably.  That  would  account  for  the 
vague  oddity  there  was  about  everything  he  did. 
His  sheets  were  spread  out  so  candidly  under  her 
eye,  that  she  had  definitely  to  turn  away  and  look 
out  the  window,  in  order  to  avoid  reading  them. 

Just  before  they  reached  the  street  where  she  was 
to  get  off,  she  pressed  the  motorman's  signal  and 
216 


INTERVENTION 

stood  up.  The  action  seemed  to  startle  her  com 
panion  rather  unnecessarily,  for  he  snatched  off  his 
spectacles,  crammed  his  pages  together  anyhow, 
and  himself  rose  to  let  her  go  by. 

She  said :  "Oh,  I'm  sorry !"  and  "Thank  you,"  in 
a  tone  which  her  faint  amusement  over  him  made  a 
little  less  mechanically  impersonal  than  the  one 
she'd  ordinarily  have  used. 

Even  so,  one  would  hardly  have  thought  he  heard 
anything  more  than  common  civility  in  it,  and  she 
was  a  good  deal  surprised  when,  obviously  without 
premeditation,  he  followed  her  down  the  aisle  and 
got  off  the  car  just  behind  her.  It  was  still  more 
disconcerting  when  she'd  crossed  the  street  and 
turned  east,  to  observe  that  he  was  coming  along 
that  way,  too. 

She  was  not  really  alarmed  about  him,  of  course, 
and  but  for  the  forlornness  of  the  neighborhood, 
with  its  negro  tenements,  boarded-up  residences, 
and  rusty  little  stores  with  windows  long  unwashed, 
she'd  hardly  have  given  him  two  thoughts.  As  it 
was,  when  she  saw  the  number  she  wanted,  painted 
217 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

dimly  on  a  transom,  she  had  an  impulse  to  keep 
right  on  going  as  briskly  as  possible  to  the  nearest 
car  line.  She  conquered  it,  of  course,  and  went  up 
the  three  rickety  steps  to  the  door  above  which  the 
number  was  painted.  It  was  an  unkempt  little 
wooden  building  one  story  high,  that  had  once  been 
a  retail  shop.  But  its  show-window — not  plate 
glass  but  common  panes — had  been  painted  white, 
as  also  the  light  in  the  door  had  been,  to  baffle  the 
curiosity  of  the  passer-by. 

She  tried  the  door  and  found  it  locked ;  knocked 
smartly  on  it,  and  got  no  answer,  and  was  turning 
away,  baffled,  when  she  saw  that  her  pursuer  from 
the  street-car  had  halted  at  the  foot  of  the  steps 
and  seemed,  indecisively,  to  be  waiting  for  her  to 
come  down.  That  was  when  she  got  her  momentary 
fright. 

She  turned  back  to  the  door  and  rattled  it. 
Whereupon  the  young  man  came  up  the  steps.  At 
that  she  rounded  upon  him. 

"What  do  you  want?"  she  c.manded  fiercely. 
218 


INTERVENTION 

"I  wanted  to  get  in,"  he  said,  and  then  she  saw 
he  had  a  key  in  his  hand. 

She  stared  at  him  a  second,  then  understood.  The 
explanation  was  so  simple  that  nothing  but  the  ex 
traordinary  nature  of  the  coincidence  had  kept  her 
from  seeing  it  sooner.  In  his  absorption  over  his 
papers,  he'd  have  ridden  by  his  corner,  if  her  get 
ting  up  hadn't  aroused  him.  She  said : 

"Oh,  then  you're  Major  March?"  Then  she  re 
alized  that  she'd  called  this  total  stranger  by  his 
first  name.  To  cover  this  slip,  she  hurried  on :  "I'm 
Celia  Blair — Alfred  Blair's  wife."  And,  in  the  next 
breath,  before  he'd  at  all  got  his,  she  added,  "I've 
come  to  bring  you  that  two  thousand  dollars." 

At  that  he  stared  back  at  her.  The  look  in  his 
eyes  wasn't  far  from  panic.  Vaguely  he  put  his 
key  back  in  his  pocket,  crumpled  his  carefully  cher 
ished  envelope  in  both  hands,  turned  very  white, 
beaded  out  all  over  his  forehead  with  sweat,  and  sat 
down  limply  on  the  top  step. 

She  rescued  his  envelope  and  said:  "If  you'll 
219 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

give  me  your  key,  I'll  go  in  and  get  you  a  drink  of 
water." 

He  said,  "Just  a  minute,"  and  before  the  expira 
tion  of  that  time,  got  to  his  feet  again,  unlocked  the 
door,  and  with  a  ceremony  pathetically  out  of  place 
in  the  circumstances,  ushered  her  in  ahead  of  him. 

The  little  shop  was  pretty  well  filled  up  with 
bulky  objects  which  she  classified  loosely  as  ma 
chinery,  but  there  were  two  chairs — one  with  a 
cushion  in  it,  in  front  of  an  old  black  walnut  table. 
In  order  to  get  him  to  sit  down  she  promptly  took 
the  other  one. 

"This  is  made  out  to  me,"  she  said,  taking  the 
check  from  her  wrist-bag,  "so  I'll  have  to  endorse 
it."  She  reached  over  and  helped  herself  to  a  pen. 
"Shall  I  say,  'Pay  to  the  order  of  Major  March?'  " 

"Yes,"  he  said  blankly,  "that's  all  right." 

When  she  pushed  it  over  to  him,  he  picked  it  up, 
but  almost  instantly  laid  it  down  again  and  drew 
a  trembling  hand  across  his  forehead.  Then,  with 
an  astonishing  intensity,  his  eyes  fairly  burning 
into  her,  he  demanded,  "There's  nothing  funny 
220 


'This  is  no  joke?     That's  a  good  check?    I  can  get  the  money?" 


INTERVENTION 

about  this,  is  there?     This  is  no  joke?     That's  a 
good  check?    I  can  get  the  money?" 

"Joke !"  she  gasped.  Then,  very  simply,  "It's  a 
good  check.  They're  the  biggest  firm  of  jewelers 
in  the  city.  It's  quite  all  right." 

He  offered  no  apology  for  his  questions ;  just  sat 
there  drawing  in  one  long  breath  after  another. 
After  a  moment  he  pulled  the  papers  out  of  the 
envelope  he'd  brought  in  with  him,  and  once  more, 
unconsciously,  began  crumpling  them. 

"Oh,  please  don't  do  that!"  Celia  cried,  and 
would  have  rescued  them  from  him.  But  he  chucked 
them  bodily  into  a  waste-paper  basket. 

"They're  no  good  now,"  he  said.  "That  check's 
the  answer  to  them.  It  was  a  fool  appeal  I  was  go 
ing  to  send  out — hopeless,  I  knew,  all  the  while." 

Then  he  got  up  and  said,  "I  suppose  you'd  like 
to  see  about  the  place  a  little,"  and  taking  her  as 
sent  for  granted,  began  to  point  things  out  to  her 
— a  hydrogen  generator,  an  electrical  furnace — 
other  things  whose  names  were  too  unfamiliar  to 
stick  in  her  mind. 

821 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

But  suddenly  he  stopped  in  full  career,  and  said, 
as  if  it  were  what  he  had  been  talking  about  all  the 
while,  "You  see,  when  a  man  really  doubts  himself, 
that's  about  the  end  of  him.  That's  why  my  talk 
with  Alfred  Blair  Saturday  just  about  finished 
me.  He's  not  one  of  these  ordinary  rich  numskulls. 
He's  a  man  of  imagination — a  big  man.  And  he 
believed  in  me  once.  He  was  the  only  person  who 
did.  It's  been,  as  much  as  anything  else,  the  feel 
ing  that  I've  got  to  justify  that  belief  that's  kept 
me  going.  I  have  kept  going,  and  I've  got  the 
things  right  that  were  wrong  before. 

"But  he  didn't  believe  that  when  I  told  him  so  the 
other  day.  He  was  kind — he'd  always  be  that — 
and  encouraging.  But  it  was  quite  plain  that  I'd 
become  to  him  just  one  of  those  freak  fool  inventors 
that  they  make  jokes  about  in  the  comic  supple 
ments — somebody  to  be  sorry  for  and  lend  fifty  dol 
lars  to  and  get  rid  of. 

"Well,  it's  pretty  hard  to  believe  a  man  is  wrong 
when  you  see  him  surrounded  with  the  evidence  of 
his  rightness  about  other  things — see  him  making 
222 


INTERVENTION 

decisions,  crisp  and  cool,  and  other  people  taking 
them  without  a  moment's  question.  So  I  came  away 
wondering  if  he  wasn't  right  about  me.  That's 
why  I  went  to  pieces  like  that  when  you  came  and 
told  me  he'd  changed  his  mind." 

"But  you  didn't  understand!"  said  Celia.  "He 
didn't  disbelieve  in  you.  He  told  me  that  night 
that  he  thought  probably  you  were  right  about  it. 
But  we're  poor.  Didn't  he  tell  you  that?  We  lost 
all  our  money.  We're  living  in  a  little  twelve-dollar- 
a-month  flat  out  near  Humboldt  Park.  He's  work 
ing  for  twenty-five  dollars  a  week — oh,  but  thirty! 
He  got  a  raise  Saturday.  So  you  see,  it  wasn't  that 
he  didn't  believe  in  you." 

It  had  been  a  certain  tense  incredulity  in  his  gaze 
at  her,  which  had  kept  her  piling  up  these  confirma 
tory  details — a  vaguely  disquieting  look.  She  was 
glad  when  he  turned  away. 

"But  then,  the  two  thousand  dollars?"  he  asked 
suddenly,  turning  back  again  after  a  silence. 
"Where  did  that  come  from?" 

"Oh,  that,"  she  said,  "was  something  that  he  in- 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

sisted  was  mine  and  wouldn't  touch.  It  was  mine, 
in  a  way,  of  course.  So  when  he  said  he  thought 
you  were  right  about  it,  I  went  and  got  the  money, 
without  telling  him,  you  see,  and  brought  it  to  you. 
And  I  don't  want  you  to  tell  him,  either.  Just 
write  him  a  note  that  you've  got  the  money  for 
the  test,  and  that  you'll  let  him  know  how  it  comes 
out." 

"Sit  down  for  another  minute,"  he  said,  and  led 
the  way  back  to  the  black  walnut  table,  where  the 
check  lay,  just  as  she'd  pushed  it  over  to  him.  "I 
think  I  ought  to  tell  you,"  he  went  on,  "that  any 
sensible  man  of  business  experience,  if  he  knew 
about  this  transaction,  would  warn  you  very 
earnestly,  not  to  go  through  with  it.  He'd  beg  you 
to  pick  up  that  check,  if  he  were  standing  here,  and 
put  it  back  in  your  pocket.  If  he  did,  I  shouldn't 
have  a  word  to  say,  except  to  thank  you  for  your 
kindness.  That's  what  I'll  do  if  you  pick  it  up  and 
put  it  back  in  your  purse  now.  I  don't  urge  you  to 
do  it  myself,  because  I  absolutely  believe  that  it's 
a  safe,  immensely  profitable  investment.  But  I'm 


INTERVENTION 

the  only  person  in  the  world  who  believes  that. 
Don't  you  want  to  take  it  back?" 

"No,"  said  Celia.    "I  believe  it,  too." 

He  picked  up  the  check,  folded  it  very  deliber 
ately,  and  put  it  in  his  pocketbook.  Visibly  he  was 
thinking  his  way  through  the  silence  to  something 
else.  At  last  he  said,  "I'll  do  as  you  like  about 
your  husband,  of  course — tell  him  simply  that  I've 
got  the  money  to  complete  the  tests;  also,  I'll  tell 
him  when  they're  successful.  But,  since  you're  a 
partner  in  this  business,  I'd  like  to  notify  you,  too. 
Do  you  mind  letting  me  have  your  address?" 

"Why,"  said  Celia,  "why — of  course  not.  I — 
we'd  be  glad  if  you'd  come  and  see  us.  And — and 
of  course  you  may  let  me  know  as  well  as  Alfred,  if 
you  like." 

He  took  the  card  she  wrote  for  him  and  put  it, 
too,  in  his  pocketbook,  with  an  air,  somehow,  of  con 
cluding  the  business  between  them  as  he  did  so. 

She  got  up  and  held  out  her  hand  to  him.  "Good- 
by,"  she  said,  "and  good  luck !  And  I  hope  you'll 
come  out  and  see  us." 

225 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

She  hadn't  the  least  idea  that  he  would.  She 
gave  him  the  invitation  in  an  uneasy  attempt  to 
obliterate  the  reason  he  had  avowed  for  asking  for 
her  address.  So  that  he  could  notify  her  as  well  as 
her  husband  of  the  success  of  his  tests !  Oh,  it  was 
natural  enough  that  he  should  want  to  do  that — 
especially  considering  how  queer  he  was — a  sort  of 
sentimental  recognition  of  her  as  a  partner  in  the 
enterprise.  If  he'd  just  said  something  like  that — 

It  was  his  silence — his  failure  to  make  that  ob 
vious  little  explanation,  that  made  it  seem  queer. 
But  even  his  queerness  could  hardly  go  to  the 
length  of  a  fear  that  her  husband  wouldn't  tell  her 
if  the  thing  succeeded. 

He  did  run  away  with  strange  notions,  though. 
His  account  of  his  scene  with  Alfred  was  so  widely 
at  variance  with  her  husband's  report  of  the  casual 
encounter  that  had  taken  place  between  them. 

What  had  he  meant  by  saying  he  had  seen  Alfred 

with  all  the  evidences  of  his  Tightness  about  other 

things  around  him;  making  decisions  that  other 

people  accepted?     It  must  have  been  a  most  casual 

226 


INTERVENTION 

encounter,  really.  Hadn't  Alfred  said  it  took  place 
in  the  street?  The  inventor  might  have  walked 
along  with  him  back  to  the  office,  of  course. 

She  stopped  short  on  the  way  over  to  the  street 
car,  from  a  sudden  impulse  to  go  back  and  ask  the 
inventor  one  question.  Had  Alfred  offered  him 
fifty  dollars?  March  hadn't  said  so  in  so  many 
words.  Alfred  had  treated  him,  he  said,  as  the  kind 
of  inventor  one  offers  fifty  dollars  to  in  order  to  get 
rid  of.  Of  course  it  was  an  absurd  idea.  Alfred 
hadn't  fifty  dollars.  She  knew — didn't  she? — al 
most  exactly,  within  a  couple  of  dollars,  how  much 
he  had  on  the  last  day  before  pay-day. 

All  the  same,  it  was  a  minute  or  two  that  she 
stood  there  fighting  off  that  impulse  to  go  back. 
And  the  real  reason  down  underneath,  why  she  did 
not  go,  was  that  she  was  afraid  to. 


CHAPTER  XI 

IN  THE  DARK 

THERE  Is  a  widely  held  idea  that  we  arrive  at 
our  convictions  by  piecing  them  together, 
matching  up  bits  that  fit,  the  way  we  solve  picture 
puzzles.  But  in  reality,  convictions  are  live  things, 
and  they  grow.  Sometimes  they're  plants  we  get 
from  the  gardener  and  set  out  in  a  carefully  se 
lected  spot,  with  an  artificially  enriched  soil  about 
their  roots;  sometimes  they  are  weeds  whose  seed 
ing  is  a  mystery  to  us  and  whose  rank  growth  is 
our  despair.  That  is  how  a  hateful  conviction 
about  her  husband  began  to  grow  in  Celia's  mind. 

She  could  not  have  told,  when  first  she  saw  it 
sprouting  up,  exactly  what  it  was  going  to  turn  out 
to  be.  It  was  just  a  vague  wonder,  at  first — some 
thing  not  to  think  about.  Something  shaped  like 
an  interrogation  point,  which  she  had  resolutely  to 
ignore  whenever  she  tried  to  tell  herself,  as  she  did 


IN    THE    DARK 

more  often  every  day,  that  she  was  completely  in 
her  husband's  confidence,  and  he  in  hers. 

The  thing  had  planted  itself  and  begun  to  grow, 
although  she  didn't  know  it,  at  some  time  before  her 
talk  with  March., 

This  was  evident  from  the  fact  that  the  invent 
or's  hints  had  found  something  in  her  that  answered 
them — met  them  half-way.  If  the  thing  had  not 
already  seeded  and  sprouted  in  her,  the  notion 
would  not  have  occurred  to  her,  even  though  labeled 
preposterous,  that  Alfred  might  have  offered  Ma 
jor  March  fifty  dollars. 

And  now  that  she  looked  at  it,  she  saw  another 
stalk  growing  beside  it — the  question  whether  Al 
fred's  boss  had  really  raised  his  wages  last  Satur 
day,  to  thirty  dollars  a  week,  and  if  so,  why  he  had 
forgotten  to  tell  her.  Forgotten !  And  come  home 
on  a  Saturday  night  without  his  week's  pay  in  his 
pocket!  And  looked  so  blank  when  she'd  asked 
him  for  it ! 

She  scolded  herself  furiously — was  indeed,  sin 
cerely  angry  with  herself — despised  herself  rather. 
229 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

It  was  her  miserable  feminine  pettiness  and  suspi 
cion  and  jealousy  that  were  responsible.  Women 
were  like  that,  she  supposed,  and  they'd  just  have 
to  get  over  it,  before  the  equality  they  were  so  fond 
of  proclaiming  nowadays  would  have  any  basis  in 
fact.  Love  in  them  didn't  breed  a  fine  confidence  in 
the  object  of  it.  It  made  them  willing — eager,  to 
impute  the  low-downest,  meanest  evasions  and 
tricks.  She  remembered,  years  ago,  having  heard 
a  boy  say  about  a  girl  he'd  quarreled  with,  that  she 
was  no  gentleman.  Did  she  want  to  give  Alfred  the 
right  to  say  the  same  thing  about  her? 

A  thorough  dressing-down  like  that  did  her 
good.  The  first  time  she  resorted  to  it,  indeed,  she 
thought  it  had  effected  a  cure.  This  was  on  the 
afternoon  of  that  very  Monday  when  she  took  the 
two  thousand  dollars  to  Major  March.  She  waited 
for  her  husband  to  come  home  that  night,  with  noth 
ing  in  her  heart  but  a  pure  longing  to  make  up  to 
him  in  love  and  confidence,  for  the  injurious  mis 
givings  she'd  harbored  against  him. 

But,  just  the  same,  when  he,  before  she'd  taken 
230 


IN    THE    DARK 

her  arms  away  from  around  his  neck,  pulled  out  of 
his  pocket  a  sealed  envelope — a  regular  pay-en 
velope — and  tore  it  open  and  produced  three  ten- 
dollar  bills,  she  sensed  something  a  little  unnatural 
about  it  all.  If  he'd  gone  to  the  cashier  to  get  the 
money  instead  of  the  check  as  he'd  promised,  would 
the  cashier  have  taken  the  trouble  to  put  the  money 
in  an  envelope?  The  pettiness  of  the  doubt  infuri 
ated  her,  and  she  retorted  on  herself  with  a  counter 
attack.  Wouldn't  she  have  been  just  as  suspicious, 
unworthy  little  fool  that  she  was,  if  he'd  taken 
three  loose  bills  out  of  his  pocket?  Have  wondered 
why  they  weren't  in  an  envelope? 

She  waited,  breathlessly  one  might  almost  have 
said,  to  see  whether  he'd  tell  her  that  he'd  heard 
from  March;  assuring  herself  pretty  often  that  of 
course  he  would,  and  finding  herself  believing,  in 
between,  that  he  wouldn't.  She  tried,  off  and  on, 
to  convince  herself  that  there  was  no  reason  why  he 
should.  But  this  ground  was  untenable. 

He  did  tell  her  on  Tuesday  night — the  very  day 
he'd  heard.  But  not  until  quite  late,  after  they'd 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

gone  to  bed.  It  hadn't  been  a  very  jolly  evening. 
There  was  an  uncomfortable  silent  stretch  after 
supper,  which  he'd  broken  up  by  suggesting  the 
movies.  They'd  gone,  and  they  hadn't  been  much 
amused.  He  had  been  as  bored  as  she,  she  was 
sure.  But  it  was  he  who  had  asked  her  what  the 
matter  was — why  she  hadn't  liked  it. 

"Oh,"  she  exclaimed,  "they're  all  so  exactly  alike, 
those  people  on  the  screen.  They  lie  so  much  and 
believe  each  other  so  easily !  Somebody  says  some 
thing  that  isn't  so  at  all,  but  no  matter  how  un 
likely  it  is,  the  other  person  acts  as  if  there  weren't 
any  possibility  of  doubting  it ;  goes  on  and  believes 
it  for  years.  I  don't  believe  that  people  really  can 
lie  very  much,  or  deceive  each  other  very  long,  there 
are  so  many  little  ways  of  giving  themselves  away. 
That  wife  to-night,  if  she  hadn't  been  born  an 
idiot,  would  have  known." 

Alfred  had  had  nothing  to  contribute  to  this  con 
versation  at  all,  and  they'd  walked  along  home, 
locked  up,  undressed  and  gone  to  bed  in  an  almost 
unbroken  silence.  It  was  then  he  said: 


IN    THE    DARK 

"Oh,  by  the  way !  I  heard  from  March.  He  got 
his  money." 

"His  two  thousand  dollars?"  It  was  curiously 
easy  for  her  to  manage  that  tone  of  cool  indiffer 
ence.  She  despised  herself,  rather,  for  being  able 
to  act  so  well.  "I  suppose,"  she  went  on,  "that  the 
person  who  gave  it  to  him  must  look  pretty  foolish 
to  you." 

"Oh,  no,"  he  said  comfortably,  "not  necessarily. 
No,  not  a  bit.  There's  a  chance  that  he's  made  a 
perfectly  corking  investment.  He  probably  got  his 
pound  of  flesh  for  it,  all  right." 

It  occurred  to  Celia  at  this  moment,  that  she'd 
made  no  bargain,  expressed  or  implied,  with  the  in 
ventor;  had  simply  given  him  the  money.  She 
didn't  believe  that  he  had  noticed  the  omission 
either. 

This  speculation  of  hers  occupied  a  rather  long 
silence.  Finally  Alfred  went  on,  jocularly — a  little 
too  jocularly,  her  ear  told  her. 

"So  you  see,  we  may  make  our  everlasting  for 
tunes  after  all.  I've  got  an  iron-clad  contract  with 
233 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

him — not  that  March  would  try  to  evade  any  sort 
of  contract,  or  even  an  obligation — that  gives  me 
half  of  whatever  his  invention  brings  in,  cash,  roy 
alties,  or  stock.  Old  lady,  we  may  get  to  be  million 
aires  yet." 

The  only  appropriate  response  Celia  could  think 
of  to  this  remark  was  a  laugh  of  good-humored 
skepticism,  and  as  she  did  not  dare  attempt  this 
(feeling  pretty  sure  it  wouldn't  sound  as  she  meant 
it  to)  she  lay  still  and  waited. 

After  another  silence,  he  asked,  "Do  you  wish 
we  were  ?" 

"Millionaires?  With  a  butler  and  a  box  at  the 
opera  and  six  motors?" 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "I  didn't  mean  anything  fantastic. 
I  meant,  were  you  wishing  it  might  run  to  enough 
to — put  us  back  where  we  were — your  old  friends, 
the  old  way  of  living?  Shall  you  be  looking  for 
ward  to  it  as  something  that  would  pull  us  out  of 
this?  That's  what  I  mean.  Are  you  getting  sick 
of  this?" 

The  words  gave  Celia  a  chance  to  tell  him  what 
234 


IN    THE    DARK 

she  really  did  want.  She'd  hesitated  to  tell  him  be 
fore,  you  will  remember,  that  dream  of  hers  about 
the  two  or  three  acres  somewhere,  from  a  reluctance 
to  cut  short  his  holiday.  Well,  whatever  had  come 
to  take  its  place,  his  holiday  was  over — had  been, 
now  she  came  to  think  of  it,  for  weeks.  And  this 
bubble  of  hope  which  Major  March's  invention  had 
sent  swimming  before  their  eyes,  was,  no  matter  how 
illusory  it  might  prove  to  be,  a  thing  one  could  use 
for  seeing  all  sorts  of  fanciful,  roseate  reflections 
in.  Well,  why  couldn't  she  say  to  him : 

"Darlingest,  I  wouldn't  go  back  to  that  old  way 
of  living  for  a  million  dollars,  or  a  hundred  million, 
and  you  know  it  just  as  well  as  I  do.  It  was  a 
nightmare  to  you  when  we  lived  like  that,  and  it 
wasn't  to  me.  But  it's  grown  to  be  a  nightmare 
to  me  now  since  I've  learned  what  really  being  alive 
means.  But  I  do  want  to  get  away  from  here  to 
somewhere  where  live  growing  things — young  live 
things — will  have  a  better  chance ;  more  air  and  sun 
and  cleanness  than  they'd  have  here.  I  don't  want 
anything  big — not  too  big  for  me  to  run  myself 
235 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

while  you're  in  town — but  room  enough  for  flowers 
and  vegetables,  and  chickens,  and  a  cow.  And  a 
baby,  Fred." 

If  she  could  have  said  that  she'd  have  saved  her 
self  some  bitterly  unhappy  weeks ;  could  have  said 
it  aloud,  that  is.  She  did  say  it  to  herself  almost 
word  for  word  as  I  have  reported  it.  But  she 
couldn't  say  it  to  Alfred.  And  why?  Well,  she 
knew  why.  Because  she  believed  he  wasn't  telling 
his  true  dreams  and  hopes  to  her. 

What  she  did  say,  with  the  kind  of  yawn  one 
makes  when  he  finds  his  teeth  inclined  to  chatter, 
was: 

"Oh,  what's  the  use,  Fred?  You  asked  me  that 
just  the  other  night.  You  don't  need  to  worry 
about  me.  It  won't  do  any  good  in  the  first  place, 
and  there's  no  need  of  it,  in  the  second.  Of  course, 
if  this  summer  keeps  on  very  hot,  it  won't  be  easy. 
This  place  gets  like  an  oven  about  three  in  the 
afternoon,  but  I  can  go  out  in  the  park  where  it's 
as  cool  as  anywhere.  You're  the  one  to  worry  about 
236 


IN    THE    DARK 

really.  You've  looked  awfully  tired  and  pulled 
down  the  last  week  or  two.  Is  it  dreadfully  hot  in 
your  office?" 

He  said,  rather  gruffly,  that  he  was  all  right,  and 
she  waited  a  good  long  while,  lying  very  still,  to 
see  if  he'd  say  any  more.  But  he  didn't. 

Well,  then,  the  thing  Celia  had  regarded,  when 
she  first  saw  its  sprouts  appear,  as  a  noxious  weed 
of  suspicion,  grew  straight  and  tall  and  hard  in 
fiber,  until  it  was  a  great  tree — a  veritable  oak  of 
conviction.  The  conviction  was  that  her  husband, 
by  means  unknown,  had  recovered  his  former  pros 
perity,  or  at  least  a  good  part  of  it;  and  that  his 
reason  for  concealing  the  fact  from  her  was  a  fail 
ure  to  trust  her — a  fear  that,  given  the  chance, 
she  would  go  straight  back  to  the  hard,  artificial, 
pretentious  life  he  had  hated  so. 

The  conviction  was  fed  and  watered  by  nothing 

tangible    enough   to   be   called   evidence.      Indeed, 

when  bits  of  evidence  or  opportunity  to  collect  bits 

of  evidence  came  her  way  she  deliberately  shut  her 

237 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

eyes  to  them.  The  fact  of  prosperity  was  legi 
bly  stamped  on  him,  that  was  all;  the  way  he 
said  things,  his  tricks  of  speech,  the  color  of  his 
ideas. 

If  she  had  been  fanatically  logical,  as  many  wo 
men  are,  the  life  would  have  been  impossible  to  her. 
Because  the  logical  implication  of  his  fear  was  that 
he  had  never  believed  in  her — didn't  believe  in  the 
new  Celia  at  all;  regarded  her  merely  as  the  old 
one  in  masquerade,  waiting  only  for  the  chance  to 
turn  back  to  her  true  colors.  All  her  guarantees 
of  good  faith,  the  finding  and  furnishing  of  the 
flat,  the  joyous  acceptance  of  his  poverty,  the  pas 
sionate  renunciation  of  her  old  self,  had  availed 
nothing. 

She  did  ride  out  to  that  logical  terminus  some 
times  when  she  was  alone,  but  the  sound  of  his  step 
on  the  stairs  always  brought  her  back  to  two  quite 
simple  facts:  that  she  was  in  love  with  him  and 
that  he  was  in  love  with  her.  No  asbertos  fabric 
of  mere  ideas  could  withstand  the  white  heat  which 
238 


IN    THE    DARK 

those  two  facts  together  generated.  So,  though 
she  was  indignant  —  tormented  —  humiliated,  she 
was  able,  in  some  mysterious  way,  to  snatch  some 
hours  out  of  the  twenty-four  of  pure  happiness 
with  him. 

She  punished  him  in  various  small  ways ;  rubbed 
the  drudgery  of  her  domestic  routine  into  him  in 
subtle  ways  that  concealed  the  intent  behind  them. 
For  example,  one  hot  night  when  he  came  home  he 
found  she  hadn't  cooked  any  supper. 

"The  stove  before  and  the  dish  water  after,"  she 
said,  "was  too  much."  If  he  didn't  mind,  they'd 
go  round  to  Larry  Doyle's  and  get  something. 
"Out  to  a  restaurant  for  dinner!"  she  mocked. 
"What  shall  we  have?  Let's  see.  Sweet-breads, 
sous  cloche,  and  hearts  of  lettuce  with  Thousand 
Island  dressing,  and  a  peach  Melba.  Doesn't  that 
sound  good?" 

He  winced  at  that,  then  said :  "All  right.  Come 
along.  We'll  go  to  the  Blackstone  instead  of  to 
Larry's,  and  we'll  have  exactly  that." 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

"The  Blackstone !"  she  flashed  at  him.  "Do  you 
think  I'd  be  seen  there  in  any  of  the  clothes  I've 
got?" 

Then,  over  the  acute  misery  in  his  face,  she  re 
pented.  She  hadn't  meant  it.  She'd  been  edgy 
all  day,  waiting  for  somebody  to  dig  her  claws 
into,  and  it  happened  to  be  he. 

She'd  love  to  go  to  the  Blackstone.  She  thought 
a  lark  that  they  flagrantly  couldn't  afford  was  ex 
actly  what  they  both  needed.  As  for  clothes,  of 
course  hers  were  all  right. 

So  they  went  and  had  a  thoroughly  good  time. 
And  when  Alfred  paid  the  bill  Celia  pretended  to 
be  looking  another  way.  The  entertainment  cut  no 
figure  in  their  weekly  accounts,  and  where  the 
money  it  cost  had  come  from  was  neither  asked 
nor  explained.  Celia  went  on  keeping  accounts,  it 
may  be  said,  but  she  no  longer  balanced  them. 

The  thing  that  made  it  possible,  of  course,  to 
go  on  like  this  from  day  to  day  was  that  a  crisis 
was  clearly  coming.  When  Major  March  had  com 
pleted  his  tests,  and  driven  his  bargain,  and  in- 
240 


IN    THE    DARK 

formed  her  of  the  result  of  it,  something  would 
have  to  happen.  If  the  tests  were  successful,  and 
the  bargain  a  good  one,  and  Alfred  didn't  tell  her 
then—! 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  ELEVENTH  HOUE 

JUST  six  weeks  after  Celia  took  her  two  thou 
sand  dollars  to  Major  March — six  weeks  and 
one  day,  to  be  precise,  bringing  it  upon  a  Tuesday, 
along  about  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning,  right  in 
the  midst  of  her  week's  ironing — she  got  the  letter 
he  had  promised  her. 

Her  husband's  manner  for  the  past  three  or  four 
days  had  led  her  to  believe  it  was  about  due.  It 
had  been  enigmatic — portentous  of  something — 
anyhow,  a  manner  of  visibly  suppressed  excitement, 
during  the  brief  periods  when  she  had  seen  him 
awake.  He  had  been  staying  down-town  evenings, 
and  even  on  Sunday  he  had  gone  off  about  nine 
o'clock,  to  clean  up  some  extra  work,  he'd  said. 

She  tore  open  the  envelope  in  a  tangle  of  contra 
dictory  emotions,  feeling  that  good  news  would  have 
so  much  bad  in  it,  and  bad  news  so  much  good,  that 


THE    ELEVENTH    HOUR 

she  hardly  knew  what  to  hope  for.     It  contained 
news  at  all  events. 

"I  haven't  a  doubt,"  March  wrote  (evidently  he 
could  lie  better  on  paper  than  viva  voce),  "that  my 
tidings,  as  tidings,  are  superfluous.  But  as  con 
gratulations,  you  will  accept  them.  The  thing  has 
come  out  beyond  my  hopes.  Not  the  tests,  which 
your  faith  made  possible.  They  showed  precisely 
what  I  knew  they  would.  But  the  bargain  we  were 
able  to  drive  on  the  strength  of  them. 

"That  was  all  your  husband's  doing,  of  course. 
The  eagles  would  have  made  a  meal  of  me  and  left 
little  but  bones.  But  in  Blair's  office,  seated  about 
his  broad  mahogany  board,  where  we  have  been 
rooted  for  the  past  four  days,  with  important  peo 
ple  clamoring  for  audience  with  him  on  other  af 
fairs,  it  has  been  easy  to  feign  an  Olympian  in 
difference  as  to  whether  our  capitalists  accepted 
our  terms  or  left  the  opportunity  to  other  and 
wiser  men.  Even  I  managed  not  to  gasp,  at  least 
not  so  that  it  showed,  when  Alfred  announced  the 
minimum  which  we  would  accept  as  a  trading  basis. 
There  are  still  a  few  details  to  be  ironed  out,  but 
the  essentials  are  all  agreed  upon. 
243 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

"We  get  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  cash — to  be 
divided  equally,  of  course,  between  Alfred  and  me 
— forty-eight  per  cent,  of  the  stock  in  the  com 
pany  to  be  formed,  and  a  royalty  of  five  per  cent. 

"I  realized  yesterday  afternoon,  for  the  first 
time,  that  between  you  and  me  no  bargain  had 
been  struck.  I  shall,  of  course,  return  to  you,  as 
soon  as  I  receive  my  check — to-morrow,  I  hope — 
the  two  thousand  dollars  on  which  the  whole  trans 
action  pivoted.  As  to  the  further  share  which  is 
rightfully  yours,  I  suggest  that,  since  you  are 
probably  a  worse  bargainer  than  I,  we  refer  the 
matter  to  Alfred.  And  I  only  wait  your  release 
from  the  seal  of  confidence  which  you  imposed  upon 
me  to  take  it  up  with  him. 

"I  am,  with  a  deeper  and  more  whole-souled  grat 
itude  than  it  is  possible  for  me  to  express, 
"Yours  most  sincerely, 

"MAJOR  MARCH." 

The  main  purport  of  this  extremely  explicit  let 
ter  went  by  Celia  almost  uncompreh',nded.  What 
her  mind  fastened  upon  were  two  or  three  phrases 
near  the  beginning  that  dealt  with  Alfred's  already 
attained  prosperity.  His  "broad  mahogany  board" 
244 


THE    ELEVENTH    HOUR 

in  a  private  office,  where  they'd  all  been  rooted  for 
the  past  three  or  four  days.  The  important  people 
outside  clamoring  for  audience  with  him  and  not 
getting  it,  obsequious  secretaries  and  stenographers 
hovering  about.  He  was  sitting  there  like  that 
now — while  she  ironed  his  shirts.  He'd  been  there 
yesterday — while  she  had  washed  them.  It  had 
been  a  steaming  hot  day  yesterday.  For  how  many 
weeks — months — had  the  farce  been  going  on? 
Had  it  ever  been  anything  but  a  farce? 

Well,  yes,  it  had.  She  recalled  with  a  hot  fierce 
relish  the  night  of  their  talk  after  her  dinner-party. 
The  agony  there  had  been  in  his  voice  when  he 
told  her  he  couldn't  stand  the  hell  he'd  been  living 
in  any  longer.  It  was  she  who  had  pulled  him 
out  of  that  hell  and  given  him  a  taste  of  Paradise 
instead.  It  had  been  a  Paradise.  There  could  be 
no  doubt  about  that,  either. 

And  this  was  how  he  had  repaid  her !  With  dis 
trust,  deceit — oh,  downright  lies.  Making  a  fool 
of  her  with  his  precious  thirty  dollars  a  week  in 
an  envelope ! 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

Well,  she  had  him  now,  as  the  saying  is,  to 
rights.  She'd  wait  a  little  longer,  until  she  was 
sure  he  had  received  his  twenty-five  thousand  dol 
lars.  And  then  she'd  ask  him,  casually,  how  the 
great  invention  was  coming  along.  And  when  he 
said  it  wasn't  coming,  or  that  those  things  took  a 
long  while,  and  one  couldn't  expect  anything  yet, 
she'd  show  him  Major  March's  check  for  her  two 
thousand  and  ask  him  how  about  that. 

She  went  on  embroidering  this  lugubrious  fancy 
for  a  while  in  the  half-hearted  belief  that  she  found 
a  sort  of  satisfaction  in  it.  But  she  gave  up  the 
attempt  at  last  and  whole-heartedly  wept. 

What  presently  dried  her  tears  and  flushed  her 
cheeks  with  a  new  fury  of  exasperation  was  the 
dazzling  perception  that  the  thing  wouldn't  come 
out  that  way  at  all.  The  picture  she  had  been 
making  up  was  as  false  as  any  movie  she  had  ever 
looked  at.  Alfred  wouldn't  lie  to  her  in  that  whole- 
cloth  sort  of  way.  He  wouldn't  be  silly  enough 
to  try  to  get  away  with  that.  He'd  tell  her  the 
truth,  or  as  much  of  it  as  he  thought  expedient, 
246 


THE    ELEVENTH    HOUR 

and  use  it  as  a  blanket  for  his  past  deception.  He'd 
flaunt  his  check  very  likely  before  her  eyes  with  a 
"Here  we  are,  old  lady.  We  can  get  a  fresh  start 
with  this — set  ourselves  up  in  business.  Cautiously, 
of  course,  perhaps  not  making  any  very  great 
change  in  our  way  of  living  just  yet." 

There  was  something  subtly  infuriating  about 
that  picture  and  it  made  Celia  see  red.  But  there 
was  a  way  to  demolish  it.  And  the  time  to  demolish 
it  was  now.  She  washed  her  face,  dressed,  and, 
without  wasting  a  move  or  a  minute,  unless  you 
can  consider  wasted  the  ironic  glance  she  allowed 
to  rest  upon  the  abandoned  ironing-board,  she  went 
down-town  to  her  husband's  office. 

She  went  with  no  definite  idea  of  what  she  was 
going  to  find,  and  with  no  plan  at  all  as  to  what 
she'd  do  when  she  found  it.  She  knew  where  to  go. 
At  least,  where  to  go  first.  She'd  been  to  the  place 
just  once,  and  that  visit  was  made  within  a  fort 
night  of  the  time  Alfred  answered  the  blind  adver 
tisement  in  the  News  and  got  his  job  at  twenty-two 
dollars  and  a  half  a  week.  It  wasn't  a  very  pleas- 
247 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

ant  experience,  since  the  foreman  of  the  room,  of 
whom  she'd  had  to  inquire  for  him,  had  growled, 
and  indeed,  had  made  it  explicit  that  he  didn't  care 
to  have  his  employees'  time  frivolously  broken  in 
upon.  And  Alfred's  fellow  draftsmen,  who  had 
taken  up  the  cry  for  him  and  sent  it  rolling  down 
the  room,  had  acted  like  a  lot  of  sophomores.  Nat 
urally  she  hadn't  gone  back. 

She  had  used  to  lunch  with  him  occasionally  in 
those  early  days,  but  their  meetings  were  effected 
by  her  stopping  at  the  drug-store  on  the  ground 
floor  of  the  building  and  telephoning  up  to  him. 
To-day,  carried  on  by  a  current  which  cared  noth 
ing  for  foremen  or  sophomoric  young  men  at  draft 
ing-tables,  she  boldly  pushed  open  the  never-for 
gotten  door,  and  at  a  desk  in  a  corner  inquired  of 
a  foreman  (the  desk  was  the  same,  but  the  foreman 
was  different)  for  Mr.  Alfred  Blair. 

"A.  C.  Blair?"  questioned  the  foreman.  "You'll 
find  him  down-stairs  where  the  general  offices  are. 
This  is  just  the  drafting-room  up  here.  Same  door 
as  this,  one  story  down." 

248 


She  went  down  one  flight  and  opened  the  corre 
sponding  door  she  was  directed  to.  She  found  her 
self  in  the  railed-out  space  of  a  very  big  room — 
it  was  a  dignified  mahogany  fence,  rather  than  a 
rail.  Inside  it  there  were  a  great  many  desks  and 
a  great  many  people.  Some  of  them  rather  im 
pressive-looking  people,  too.  But  none  of  them, 
she  was  able  swiftly  to  assure  herself,  was  Alfred. 
There  was  a  door,  though,  down  at  the  end,  marked 
"A.  C.  Blair.  Private." 

"Who  was  it  you  wanted  to  see?"  a  languid  voice 
inquired. 

Turning  in  the  direction  the  voice  came  from, 
Celia  confronted  a  young  lady  at  the  telephone 
switchboard. 

"I'd  like  to  speak  to  Mr.  Blair,  if  you  please," 
Celia  said  very  politely  indeed. 

"He's  in  an  important  conference,"  said  the 
young  lady,  "and  can't  be  disturbed." 

"Very  well,"  said  Celia.     "I'll  wait." 

There  was  a  hard  mahogany  bench  outside  the 
rail  where  persons  were,  it  appeared,  at  liberty  to 
249 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

wait  as  long  as  they  liked.  But  the  movement  of 
the  young  lady's  very  visible  shoulders  made  it  evi 
dent  that  she  considered  such  a  proceeding  ill-ad 
vised  and  fruitless. 

During  the  better  part  of  an  hour  that  Celia  sat 
there  the  magnificence  of  her  husband's  isolation 
was  further  revealed  to  her.  Lots  of  people  tried 
to  talk  to  him  over  the  telephone,  only  to  be  turned 
away  in  most  instances  with  the  same  formula  that 
had  been  used  for  her. 

Another  thing  Celia  became  aware  of,  though 
only  vaguely,  was  that  she  herself  was  an  object 
of  some  curiosity.  A  man  from  one  of  the  desks 
down  near  the  private  door  came  out  and  had  a 
low-voiced  colloquy  with  the  telephone  girl,  and 
then  came  over  to  her.  Since  Mr.  Blair  was  busy, 
could  no  one  else  attend  to  her  business  for  her? 
When  Celia  said  it  was  Mr.  Blair  himself  whom 
she  wished  to  see,  he  told  her  that  if  she  wished 
to  give  her  name  the  girl  would  telephone  it  in. 
But  Celia  said  this  wasn't  necessary.  She  would 
wait. 

250 


THE    ELEVENTH    HOUR 

She  didn't  mind  waiting,  as  a  matter  of  fact. 
She  could  afford  to  wait.  Because  when  she  did 
see  him,  at  all  events  when  he  saw  her,  her  vengeance 
would  be  instantaneous  and  terrible.  He'd  stand 
there  before  her  red-handed,  as  it  were. 

It  was  with  a  startling  suddenness  that  the  tele 
phone  girl  finally  spoke  to  her.  "There's  Mr.  Blair 
coming  out  of  his  office  now,"  she  said.  "He  seems 
to  be  going  out.  But  you  can  speak  to  him  if  you 
like.  He'll  come  this  way." 

And  then  followed  what  were,  I  think,  the  most 
eventful  thirty  seconds  in  Celia  Blair's  life.  All 
she  did  with  them  was  to  get  up  and  walk  swiftly 
across  the  railed-out  space  to  the  telephone  girl's 
desk  and  stand  there,  leaning  over  the  switchboard, 
with  her  back  to  the  little  gate  Alfred  was  coming 
through,  as  well  as  to  the  door  he  was  going  out  of. 

Also,  she  said  to  the  telephone  girl,  with  a  mirac 
ulous  kind  of  smile,  "I'll  wait  till  another  time,  I 
think,  when  he  isn't  so  busy." 

Of  course,  the  important  thing  was  what  she  did 
not  do.  She  did  not  lay  the  irreparable  ax  to  the 
251 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

tree  of  their  mutual  love  and  confidence  and  hap 
piness. 

I  think,  in  all  likelihood,  it  was  that  new  sym 
pathy  with,  and  longing  for,  and  understanding  of, 
live  growing  things  which  had  sprung  up  within 
her  with  the  spring  of  the  year,  that  saved  her. 
A  comprehension  of  the  fact  that  while  you  could 
hew  marble,  or  pour  steel  into  forms  prescribed  by 
logic  of  a  hard  geometry,  you  could  not  deal  with 
living  things  like  that.  Things  that  were  alive 
could  be  killed. 

She  didn't  think  it  out  during  those  thirty  sec 
onds.  All  she  had  was  a  brilliant  vision  of  what 
Alfred's  face  would  look  like  when  he  saw  her  stand 
ing  there  confronting  him.  After  that,  until  the 
door  into  the  corridor  had  closed  behind  him,  she 
merely  prayed  that  he  wouldn't  think  of  some  last 
message  to  leave  with  the  telephone  girl  and  come 
over  and  see  her  there. 

She  sat  down  again  for  two  or  three  minutes' 
after  he'd  gone,  and  then  went  home. 

She  found  him  there  waiting  for  her.     He'd 
252 


H 


THE    ELEVENTH    HOUR 

driven  out,  it  seemed,  in  a  taxi,  and  had  had  time 
to  get  rather  worried.  Not  because  she  was  away 
from  home  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  but  because  the 
look  of  the  place  indicated  that  she'd  abandoned  it 
in  a  hurry. 

"It  was  pretty  hot,"  she  said.  "I  went  out  for 
some  air.  But  you — !  Home  like  this  ?  Nothing's 
gone  wrong,  has  it?" 

"No,"  he  said,  " — right.  I've  got  some  things 
to  tell  you." 

She  cried  out.  "You  don't  mean  Major  March? 
Not  the  great  invention?" 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "there's  that.  We  cleaned  it  up 
this  morning.  I've  got  a  check  for  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  in  my  pocket.  Thought  perhaps 
you'd  like  to  have  a  look  before  I  banked  it.  But 
let's  not  get  started  on  that  yet.  There's  something 
else." 

From  the  burning  intensity  of  the  look  in  her 
wide-open  eyes  he  turned  away — walked  off  to  the 
window.  And  there,  with  many  haltings  and  stum 
blings,  began  telling  her  the  story  you  know  al- 
253 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

ready :  how  his  first  promotion  had  seemed  so  inse 
cure  that  he'd  put  off  telling  her  about  it.  How, 
when  the  day  came  that  he  needed  capital  for  buy 
ing  into  the  business,  the  very  ease  with  which  he'd 
got  it  made  him  seem  rather  a  fool.  Feel  at  least 
that  he'd  look  rather  a  fool  to  her,  and  would  make 
her  suspect  that  the  uprooting  of  their  former  life 
had  been  less  the  necessity  he'd  painted  it  than  a 
sort  of  temperamental  brainstorm  on  his  own  part. 
How,  finally,  he'd  loved  it  so — exactly  as  it  was, 
this  new  life  of  theirs — that  he  had,  out  of  sheer 
cowardice,  put  off  telling  from  day  to  day  the  thing 
that  would  make  a  change. 

"I  knew  I  had  nothing  to  be  afraid  of,  really 
— that  no  material  change,  I  mean,  could  alter  the 
essentials  of  this  new  thing  of  ours.  I  funked  it, 
really,  as  one  does  the  dentist.  I've  paid  for  it 
— I  hope  you'll  believe  that — exactly  as  one  pays 
for  putting  off  the  dentist.  The  longer  I  put  it 
off  the  worse  it  hurt,  and  the  worse  I  knew  it  was 
going  to  hurt.  But — well,  the  tooth's  out  now! 
254 


THE    ELEVENTH    HOUR 

You  will  forgive  me,  won't  you?  Oh,  I  know  you 
will!" 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her  then,  and  fairly 
cried  out,  she  had  gone  so  white.  Naturally  enough 
— only  he  couldn't  understand — with  the  sense  of 
the  dreadful  nearness  of  the  peril  she  had  escaped. 
But  she  came  straight  into  his  arms  and  he  at 
tributed  the  whiteness  to  the  heat. 

"We've  got  to  get  out  of  this,"  he  said,  "that's 
clear  enough.  But  where  we  go,  and  how  we  live, 
that's  in  your  hands."  He  kissed  them  both,  and 
his  voice  broke.  "In  your  hands,  my  dear." 

Then,  to  get  her  quiet,  he  told  her  about  the 
car  he'd  bought.  They'd  promised  it  for  to-day, 
and  he  was  furious  because  they'd  failed  him.  But 
to-morrow,  they  said,  was  sure.  He'd  abandon  the 
office  for  a  week,  and  they'd  take  a  little  trip. 
Where  would  she  like  to  go? 

"We  might  cruise  around,"  suggested  Celia, 
"and  look  at  places  where  we  could  live — not  too 
far  away  from  town  for  you  to  come  in,  but  far 
255 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

enough  so  there'd  be  room — two  or  three  acres — 
where  things  could  have  air  and  sun  enough  to 
grow  in — flowers,  and  vegetables,  and  chickens,  and 
a  cow.  And  a  baby." 

"That  was  why,"  she  told  him  after  a  while,  "I 
sold  the  jewelry  and  gave  the  two  thousand  dollars 
to  Major  March." 

He  amazed  her  by  taking  this  announcement  with 
a  grin,  rather  than  a  gasp. 

"Oh,  Major  didn't  give  you  away!"  he  assured 
her.  "But,  of  course,  when  the  tests  came  out  the 
way  they  did  and  I  saw  what  we  had,  I  asked  him 
where  he'd  got  the  money.  How  much  he'd  had 
to  pay  for  it.  Because,  of  course,  what  he  had  had 
to  pay  ought  to  come  out  of  my  share  as  well  as 
out  of  his.  His  way  of  refusing  to  tell  me  was  so 
impressive — religious,  you  might  almost  call  it — 
that  it  would  have  given  almost  anybody  a  hunch. 
And  then,  when  he  swore  that  the  person  who  had 
given  him  the  money  hadn't  driven  any  bargain 
for  it  at  all,  it  struck  me  that  there  wasn't  any 
body  else — couldn't  be  anybody  else  who'd  be — " 
256 


THE    ELEVENTH    HOUR 

"Fool  enough,"  Celia  put  in  contentedly. 

"Oh,  well,"  he  said,  "I  don't  care  what  name  you 
call  it  by." 

He  found  out  about  her  visit  to  the  office,  too. 
No  later  than  next  day.  "That  stenographer  of 
mine,"  he  said,  "has  got  a  queer  bee  in  her  bonnet. 
She  swears  that  you  were  in  my  office  yesterday 
morning,  and  that  you  waited  there  for  an  hour 
to  see  me,  and  then  went  away." 

"It  must  have  been  a  lady,  then,  I  suppose," 
mused  Celia.  "Somebody  all  dressed  up,  probably, 
and  terribly  excited  because  they  wouldn't  let  her 
in.  But  what  made  her  think  it  was  me?  She's 
never  seen  me." 

"Well,  of  course,"  said  Alfred,  "there  are  three 
pictures  of  you  on  my  desk."  And  then,  meeting 
her  eyes,  he  cried  out,  "It  was  you !" 

Well,  the  new  car  had  arrived  by  then,  and  what 
with  the  excitement  of  getting  ready  for  their  trip 
and  preparing  the  feast  that  Major  March  had 
been  invited  to  for  that  night,  and  the  delirious 
bliss  of  just  dropping  everything  now  and  then  and 
257 


THE    THOROUGHBRED 

looking  at  each  other,  I  suppose  it  is  no  wonder 
that  they  failed  to  treat  that  potential  and  so  nar 
rowly  averted  tragedy  as  soberly  as  it  deserved. 
Indeed,  beyond  a  guilty  laugh  from  Celia,  and  a 
wry  grin  and  an  exclamation  from  Alfred,  they 
didn't  treat  it  at  all. 

Two  or  three  nights  later,  though,  out  in  the 
country  and  under  a  very  fine  yellow  moon,  in  the 
course  of  talking  over  the  whole  adventure,  he 
asked  her  why  she  let  him  off  like  that. 

She  said,  with  more  meaning  in  her  voice  than 
there  was  in  the  words,  "Oh,  what  would  be  the  use? 
You  may  find  me  some  time  where  you  could  smash 
me  flat,  or  I  find  you.  But  I  don't  believe  there's 
anything  immoral  about  not  paying  off  grudges, 
do  you  ?  There's  something  in  the  Bible  about  that. 
And  don't  you  think  we're  both  much  nicer  this 
way  than  we  would  be — crushed?" 

He  couldn't  take  it  as  lightly  as  that,  but  his 
feelings  wouldn't  go  into  adequate  words. 

"You  little  thoroughbred,"  he  said. 

THE    END 


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